If you scan for trading signals or if you backtest trading systems, you need historical stock prices. In this blog, we show how you can download this data.
If you go on finance.yahoo.com type in a stock symbol in the field quote lookup. After this go to Historical Data. Now you see a table with the columns Date, Open, High, Low, Close, Adjusted Close and Volume. This table data can you download to an ASCII-file in a CSV-format. The Adjusted Close is corrected by splits and dividends. If you wish to correct the Open, High, and Low you have to do it by your self.
But manually downloading yahoo data is far too cumbersome. A better solution is to use software with a yahoo data interface. The Loro Scanner has this interface to download the historical prices automatically including split- and dividend adjustments:
We also sell a standalone software to download historical stocks prices from yahoo. The java based program is easy to use. You only tell the program which symbols you want to download and for how many years. The lifetime version cost 99 $. If you are interested please contact us.