How to pull in historic values for S&P 500?

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bpaksoy Author

Level 1

63 points

How to pull in historic values for S&P 500?

Dear all,

Does anyone know the right way to pull in historic values for S&P 500 Index into Numbers using the STOCKH() function?

STOCK("^SPX",0) works fine when I try to bring the latest closing for S&P 500.

STOCKH("XOM",0,"1-8-2018") also works fine when I try to pull in Exxon's closing price on January 8, 2018.

STOCKH("^HSI",0,"1-8-2018") also works fine when I try to pull in Hang Seng Index's closing price on January 8, 2018.

Yet, STOCKH("^SPX",0,"1-8-2018") returns an error which says "Data for the ‘close’ attribute isn’t available for the selected symbol" when I click on the error sign.

Thank you.

Alper

P.S. I am using Numbers 4.3.1 on macOS High Sierra (10.13.3)

Posted on Feb 10, 2018 1:48 PM

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Answer 1

bpaksoy Author

Level 1

63 points

Feb 13, 2018 11:09 AM in response to SGIII

Because, even, STOCK("^SPX",0) has not been working for the last two days, I reported the issue to Apple as you suggested. The two functions continue working fine for other stocks and indices.

For those looking for an alternative, I suggest using ^SP500TR (the S&P 500 Total Return Index) instead of ^SPX (the S&P 500 Index).

Before this issue, I had not paid attention to the fact that the widely used the S&P 500 index was a price index. If you don't need to know the value of the S&P 500 Index for some particular reason, the S&P 500 Total Return Index is a better gauge of the stock market, especially if you would like to compare the returns provided by the overall stock market with those of other assets over any particular period of time.

Alper

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