Comments on: Download Price Quotes to Microsoft Money After Microsoft Pulls the Plug

By: John

John — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 22:57:52 +0000

TFB,

Thanks! If I knew Python well enough, I would throw in an Onerror messagebox “The following stocks/fund name is not recognized and cannot be retrieved. Ending the script. Press OK to acknowledge.” It seems alot of the questions you deal with above are from stock name issues and not actual script issues, so I am not the only one who had a problem there, but you shouldn’t have to research my stock names for me. Thanks for doing my homework for me and for the help!

By: TFB

TFB — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 22:47:01 +0000

John – CTDB.OB isn’t a valid ticker in Yahoo. It says the symbol changed to CTDBQ.OB.

By: John

John — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 22:33:02 +0000

Hello! I am getting this error:
Retrieving quote for XOM
Retrieving quote for CTDB.OB
Traceback (most recent call last):
File “C:\Users\J\Desktop\Money Files\quotes.py”, line 245, in
sec.getQuote()
File “C:\Users\J\Desktop\Money Files\quotes.py”, line 86, in getQuote
timeStruct = time.strptime(quote[2] + ” ” + quote[3], “%m/%d/%Y %I:%M%p”)
File “C:\Python26\lib\_strptime.py”, line 454, in _strptime_time
return _strptime(data_string, format)[0]
File “C:\Python26\lib\_strptime.py”, line 325, in _strptime
(data_string, format))
ValueError: time data ‘N/A N/A’ does not match format ‘%m/%d/%Y %I:%M%p’

I tried it with Python 2.6.2 and 2.7. Any ideas?

By: HENRY ALKEN

HENRY ALKEN — Sun, 18 Jul 2010 14:50:50 +0000

I thought I would check in to see how everyone is doing with the MSN Money replacement business.

I got a free copy of MSN Money Plus and started using TFB’s price updating scripts. But then I found that my broker, Merrill Lynch, had an OFX download for MSN Money users. I started using that & it worked extremely well, downloading prices, dividends, stock splits, etc.

But this week Merrill Lynch notified me that Microsoft is no longer supplying them with data & so they have disabled the MSN Money OFX file download from their website. From now on they will supply only QIF files for Quicken.

So I thought I would switch to Quicken. However, when I read the user reviews on 2010 Quicken they were extremely hostile to the software and to the Intuit company. In fact I have never read such bad reviews.

So now I am sticking with MSN Money Plus and back to using TFB’s Life Saver script for updating prices from Yahoo.

One reader, #47, asked how to disable the import – file connection. This is not so easy. Here is one Microsoft recommended procedure:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/910214
As you can see even the Microsofties have trouble doing it.

For those who wish to study OFX, there is a PDF spec that can be downloaded:
http://www.ofx.net/
So,in summary, I am using TFB’s great script and a dummy account for updating prices. I manually enter the broker’s cash total which includes all dividends. Individual dividends are not entered. I enter, by hand, stock splits and stock purchases & sales.

How is everyone else doing?

By: whm

whm — Sun, 18 Jul 2010 14:20:54 +0000

MS Money Plus Deluxe (ver 17) alerts you to dividend payouts for your holdings without downloading the information from your broker. Would you consider adding this feature to your quote script? If not, is there a web site that provides and tracks dividend payout dates & amounts for investments. Thank you.

By: HENRY ALKEN

HENRY ALKEN — Sat, 24 Apr 2010 18:06:57 +0000

TFB

I have attempted to obtain the log files which describe the traffic between Money and Merrill Lynch but have not been successful:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/911941/en-us

I have checked the Registry and it has been correctly changed to permit log file generation.

The two log files should be:

merrillrs.txt for the request to Merrill
merrillrq.txt for the response from Merrill

Maybe you will have better luck.

By: TFB

TFB — Sat, 24 Apr 2010 16:13:15 +0000

Henry – If you are able to run the account update script and Merrill Lynch is your only investment account, you probably don’t need the quote script. The prices only update once a day. Run it again in a few days and see if the prices change. If for some reason Merrill Lynch does not include prices in its download, you will need the quote script but you will have to manually edit the list of stocks and funds in that script. It doesn’t know about your accounts or holdings.

By: HENRY ALKEN

HENRY ALKEN — Sat, 24 Apr 2010 16:05:00 +0000

TFB

Thank you. I am now getting a Money window that pops up with a Heading of Import Summary and a content of Import Complete after I run ofx-ba-tfb-auto.py.txt using import-ofx.bat.txt. Merrill Lynch is accepting the request for updates without complaining but is not sending the new prices.

In your “quotes.py” you created a class OfxWriter to list the stock names.

Is that list of stocks to be updated now created by Money and is no longer necessary?

By: TFB

TFB — Sat, 24 Apr 2010 02:48:27 +0000

Henry - What settings did you use? According to a post by Dan, it's “caps”: [ "SIGNON", "INVSTMT" ], “fiorg”: “www.mldirect.ml.com”, “fid”: “5550″, “url”: “https://taxcert.mlol.ml.com/eftxweb/access.ofx”,

By: HENRY ALKEN

HENRY ALKEN — Sat, 24 Apr 2010 01:58:34 +0000

TFB

I am having no luck getting a response from Merrill Lynch using ofx.py.

I am getting HTTP Error 400.

Any help finding the “sites” data for Merrill Lynch would be appreciated.

Thank you.