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Comment by vthallam | Hacker News Reader

I hope they expose the API. There are very few good API's in finance, Yahoo's was great until they deprecated it.

It would be fantastic if they did this, really don't see why they don't unless they are buying their data from someone else in which case they will have limits on how they can reuse that data.

Been a cofounder of a finance startup and working with any of the major data providers in finance is a complete nightmare. You are paying exorbitant fees, for what is essentially public information, which is delivered through the most antiquated methods, and then you still have to spend a week writing various parsers just so that you can convert that data in to something usable.

I never knew how messy the data was until I had to be the one writing those parsers and it is a huge mess.

> It would be fantastic if they did this, really don't see why they don't

Google really doesn't do open APIs anymore. Every new product is without an open API and they've been slowly deprecating and removing APIs from old products. I guess they wanna be like Apple.

I know. When I started looking for a side project, all I see is high priced API's from no-name companies. Not sure if I want to base my prediction on these data sets.

If clean data and easy access is a priority and you are willing to pay money, the gold standard is CRSP [1]. Full disclosure - I work there.

[1] http://www.crsp.com/

Just to clarify: CRSP is great but not the gold standard. A lot of big comapnies use services from Xignite,CaptialIQ and ICE Data.

>"You are paying exorbitant fees, for what is essentially public information"

I don't understand how this works. Is it really public information or the different markets sell it? Where are the providers getting the information in the first place?

You mean free APIs. Of course there are good API's in finance if you are willing to pay.

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