NOTE: THIS IS FOR ACTIVE STOCKS ONLY. FOR DELETED/DEAD STOCKS, PLEASE SEE http://www.princeton.edu/~econlib/ds/deadstoc.html

Sample Search: Give the high price for Novell stock from April 5, 1999 to April 5, 2001 on a daily basis.

1. On the main Datastream screen, enter CODE in the box next to Program Number. Press Enter.

2. Enter NOVELL on the line that asks for a keyword.

In the following bank of choices, E should be selected for Equity.

Select U$ under Currency Symbol.

Press Enter.

3. Notice the different companies and the corresponding mnemonics and codes. In this case, we are only interested in Novell. The mnemonic for Novell is @NOVL. The code is 729152. You may use the mnemonic or the numeric code to find desired information about the company.

Write down both the mnemonic and the code number for use when Entering the Macro.

 






4. Drag the cursor to the box marked Macro at the top of the screen. Click on Macro and then click on Edit Macro. Select download.mac from the list of choices and then click OK.

7. A notepad screen will appear. Change ONLY what it is within quotation marks on this screen. At the top line change the file name to a:\yourfile.csv

It is important that you save the macro as a CSV file so that you can open the data in Microsoft Excel, Stata, and SAS. If you do not have a floppy disk with you, save the file to the hard drive and then FTP the document to your Unix account. Files left on SSRC computers will be erased.

8. At the line that begins SEND, enter the dates of your search. After the first quotation mark, there is a comma. After this comma, enter the starting date in the form of MM-DD-YY, followed by a comma (see image). Enter the ending date in the same manner.

NOTE: If you want your data to run until the present, do not include an ending date and simply leave the two commas following the starting date.

After the commas, enter the frequency for which you want the data. Note the following frequency codes:

Daily = D

Weekly = W

Monthly = M

Quarterly = Q

Yearly = Y

After TESTLIST:

DATA

Enter your mnemonic. Enter the code exactly as it appeared on the Datastream screen. Surround the mnemonic with quotation marks, followed by a comma outside of the quotation marks.

***In this example, we are interested in finding the high price of Novell over a two-year period. Therefore, we must enter (PH) after the code. The final code will appear as "@NOVL(PH)", (See image.)

If we did not enter (PH), we would receive daily closing prices, which is the default information. If you are interested in receiving both the high price and the daily closing price, in the macro, enter "@NOVL(PH)", on the first line and "@NOVL", on the second line. (See image.)

NOTE: You may enter more than one mnemonic. Line up all mnemonics in a column, surrounding each one by quotation marks and following each by a comma, including the LAST code.






9. Move the cursor to File at the top of the notepad screen and select Save. Click on Save and then minimize this screen.

 





Running the Macro:

10. Return to the main Datastream screen. Press CLEAR so that he original screen appears. The program will NOT run if you do not return to the main screen.
11. Select Macro at the top of the screen. Select Run Macro and then select download.mac. Click on OK.









12. If the macro ran properly, a screen of white numbers should flash up on the main Datastream screen and then the original Datastream screen should return. If it did not run properly, an error message will appear. Note the problem and fix the macro.

 

Opening the CSV file:

13. Open Microsoft Excel and open your file. If your file does not appear, make sure the browser is selected to search for All Files.

14. Make sure your data is saved to either your floppy disk or on your Unix account.

In Datastream, all company tickers are preceded by a country designation except for British stocks. For stocks traded on the New York Stock Exchange or the American Stock Exchange, the ticker is preceded by U:. For stocks traded on the Nasdaq Stock Exchange, the ticker is preceded by @. For example, IBM's Datastream code is U:IBM and Microsoft's is @MSFT. There are 2 types of stocks. When you click on CODE you will see an Sts column which stands for status. R means it is a research stock and time series are available. V means valuations only and you will only find some current fundamentals. Only use stocks with a status of R. Since all codes must be preceded by a quote and followed by a quote and a comma, an easy way to take care of this is to use EXCEL. For hints on how to do this, see http://firestone.princeton.edu/econlib/DSticker.doc.

Certain equity datatypes are not available for all countries. The help screens will detail which datatypes work in which programs and country availability. Datastream categorizes data availability into 2 groups: G1 countries and G2 countries.

G1 Countries are countries for which full research level data is available. The following G1 countries include full research data: Argentina, Australia, Austria, Bangladesh, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Chile, China, Colombia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Ecuador, Egypt, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Kenya, Luxembourg, Malaysia, Mauritius, Mexico, Morocco, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Pakistan, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Russian Federation, Singapore, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Sri Lanka, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey, United Kingdom, United States, Venezuela, and Zimbabwe.

G2 Countries are countries for which restricted equity research data is available. Please note that, as the data availability for these countries is upgraded, announcements will be made on the 99 program. The G2 countries are Croatia, Iceland, Jamaica, Jordan, Lithuania, Nigeria, Romania, Saudi Arabia, Slovakia, Slovenia, and Tunisia.