DJ World Index Data being pulled from public view?
October 5, 2008 6:44 PM   Subscribe

Is Google Finance doing this on purpose? There are stock indexes that most people don't know about, that Google has been under-reporting (missing some data) for over a month now. Specifically, W1DOW, W4DOW, W1FIN, W4FIN, and probably others.

These indexes are good measure of how the global economy is doing. IIRC, back in August Google Finance stopped reporting the 52 week highs and lows correctly. The 52 week high is now consistently reported as somewhere close to the LOW(perhaps previous day's data) and the 52 week low is always reported as 0.00. In fact, it's much harder than 60 days ago to even find the definitions of these indexes:

W1DOW - Dow Jones World Stock Index
W4DOW - Dow Jones World Stock Index MINUS US companies
W1FIN - Dow Jones World Financial Index
W4FIN - Dow Jones World Financial Index MINUS US companies

It seems like this data is being hidden from the public. If anyone has links to accurate and consistently updated data, it would be appreciated.
posted by Rafaelloello to Work & Money (6 answers total) 1 user marked this as a favorite
 
Best answer: Here's W1DOW, W4DOW, W1FIN and W4FIN from MSN.
Reuters, MarketWatch, Bloomberg should have them as well.
posted by joe vrrr at 7:36 PM on October 5, 2008


If you click "historical prices" on google finance, you will see that the daily data is weird, but the weekly appears to be okay?

In the absence of more damning information, and given that data that is flung around the internet can occasionally have formatting/parsing problems, I imagine this is more of a Hanlon's Razor situation than a diabolical plot by the exchanges.
posted by misterbrandt at 7:43 PM on October 5, 2008 [1 favorite]


Response by poster: This is twice in the last couple weeks I've been exposed to Hanlon's Razor (and never before). I like it.
posted by Rafaelloello at 7:53 PM on October 5, 2008


Why wouldn't you just use the MSCI indices? Thats sort of industry standard.
posted by JPD at 5:07 AM on October 6, 2008


The MSN links Joe Vrrr linked to don't have historical graphs going back more than a few days. Neither does Yahoo Finance. I'd say there's something wrong with the data source everyone's getting info from or else the index itself. You should be able to find more info at djindexes.com, but my quick exploration didn't turn up any answer. Google has a link into that site for W1DOW that's no longer functioning.
posted by Nelson at 8:51 AM on October 6, 2008


Best answer: Indexes are the intellectual property of their managers / sponsors. The "Dow Jones" of the Dow Jones 30 index and the "S&P" of the S&P 500 aren't just for show.

Different indexes and news sources have different takes on what aspects are public domain, what are protected but subject to fair use exemption, and what cannot be used or possessed except under license and royalty.

Whenever a free or low-cost source has limited information for an interesting index, it is almost certainly because the license is costly and they can't get legal comfort on the fair use of what they haven't licensed.
posted by MattD at 8:59 AM on October 6, 2008 [1 favorite]


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