Downloading Quotes in CSV format from Yahoo Finance - Beta symbol?

Question

By using http://finance.yahoo.com/d/quotes.csv?s=STOCKNAME&f=I am able to download a CSV file, does anyone know what the symbol for beta is? It should go after &f= e.g. the symbol for the stock name is n and it goes in as such: http://finance.yahoo.com/d/quotes.csv?s=STOCKNAME&f=n

Thanks in advance for your help!

Answer 1

Unfortunately you can´t

There is no beta 'symbol' to allow you to download beta using Yahoos CSV API.

With that being said, it may be important to note

Though plenty of financial sites provide them, what risks are you taking by using one of the betas provided by an outside source? Betas provided for you by online services have unknown variable inputs, which in all likelihood are not adaptive to your unique portfolio.

Crucially:

1. Provided betas are calculated with time frames unknown to their consumers.

2. Another problem may be the index used to calculate beta.

3. Another unknown factor of pre-made betas is the method used to calculate them.

Yahoo may therefore not provide beta due to it being liable to misinterpretation based on the above (though this is purely speculative).

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So then what?

It's actually pretty straight forward to calculate yourself, all you need to do is:

1. Decide your time horizon for measurement

2. Decide an appropriate market to measure against

3. Ensure your chosen investment and markets share matching datapoints across the chose period (for ease of calculation)

4. Decide an appropriate risk free rate of return

5. Decide your model of calculation (e.g. regression or the capital asset pricing model, 'CAPM')

The methodology to then perform the calculation is dependant on what you're trying to accomplish and within what (programming) environment.