Yahoo Finance Error "Error using yahoo/fetch (line 44) Security list must be cell array of strings."

Hi All,

I am trying to build out the current market value for a portfolio where the # of securities is dynamic, and the user enters the number of securities and portfolio weights each time the code runs (This all works fine).

I am running into issues when trying to pull data back from yahoo for multiple securities, see the below code. i should be the value in the array "Securities".

Also, once I get this working, how would I be able to have it constantly run and update the market value during market hours, so I can have a close to up to date market value streaming real time (less the 15 yahoo delay).

numsec = ('Enter the number of securities in Portfolio: ');
numsec = input(numsec)
Security = cell(numsec,1);
SecurityWt = nan(numsec,1);
for ns = 1:numsec
    Security{ns} = input(['Enter Security ',num2str(ns),' Ticker: '],'s');
    SecurityWt(ns) = input(['Enter Security ',num2str(ns),' Weight (ex: .25): ']);
end

if sum(SecurityWt) ~=1
display('Error - The sum of the security weights must be equal to 1! ')
else
 pie(SecurityWt,Security)

   % Begin Pulling in market prices to contruct portfolio Market Value
   c = yahoo;
   yhoo_fld = 'Last';

for i=1:size(Security)
    fetch(c,i,yhoo_fld)
end

Answer 1

[Walter Roberson]

You are trying to fetch information about the number stored in i rather than about the i'th security. fetch(c, Security{i}, yhoo_fld)

Alternately you can use fetch(c, Security, yhoo_fld) to get information on all of them at once without a loop.

[P_Alpha]

Hi Walkter, thanks for the response. I am almost there. The last thing I need is how would I have this automatically create a new price variable for each security in "Security". For example, if there are two securities "AAPL" & "TSLA", how would I have this create a Pri_AAPL and Pri_TSLA variable?

[P_Alpha]

I actually figured it out using your method without the loop. Once I got the prices. My question now is how do I tie together my prices to my securities? PriList is converting the the 1x1 structure into a column of prices.

numsec = ('Enter the number of securities in Portfolio: ');
numsec = input(numsec)
Security = cell(numsec,1);
SecurityQty = nan(numsec,1);
for ns = 1:numsec
    Security{ns} = input(['Enter Security ',num2str(ns),' Ticker: '],'s');
    SecurityQty(ns) = input(['Enter Security ',num2str(ns),' Quantity: ']);
end

   c = yahoo;
   yhoo_fld = 'Last';

prices = fetch(c,Security,yhoo_fld);
PriList = prices.Last

[Walter Roberson]

Sorry I do not have that toolbox to test with.