The issue affecting mutual funds data is still ongoing since around the beginning of this month. Last week the data vendor IEX Cloud has told me that their engineering team is investigating the problem and will respond when they have more info. Sorry for the continued problem - I'll keep posting updates here.
A datasource issue from IEX is affecting all US mutual fund data: prices are showing the March 22 value instead of the up-to-date correct value.
I'm following up with the data provider to determine the source of the problem and get it resolved. I will update again once more information is available and also when the problem has been fixed.
I've now released a fix for both of the new bugs, so Stock Connector spreadsheets should be working for files with up to 300 stocks. I'll continue testing with larger files but those should be working too now.
You may need to get the latest updates for version 514 or later: instructions to get updates
I have discovered an additional problem with my data provider's update from Friday. It is causing files with large numbers of stocks to not be able to update. If you have 120 stocks or fewer, Stock Connector should be working normally for you. I'm currently working on the fix for customers with more stocks.
IEX changed the limits on how many stock symbols can be queried at once. As a result, users with more than 12 stocks experienced downtime from Feb 9 to Feb 10, 2024.
This issue is now fixed - I have implemented a workaround that batches smaller data requests so that all Stock Connector spreadsheets work properly again.
Fixed bug causing refreshes to slow down permanently. Now when your computer is idle, refreshes gradually slow down after a while, but they start again once you start using Stock Connector again. Just click inside Stock Connector and refreshes should begin happening at your selected rate.
Fixed bug via a change to my data source config. All customers should now be receiving data normally.
Stocks data outage is affecting customers - investigating to find the root cause.
Fixed bug caused by mutual funds support.
Added support for mutual funds (eg. VTSAX). Mutual funds update daily.
Updated Stock Connector to prevent occasional 2-minute delays in price information.
A bug prevented prices from displaying for international (non-US) stocks, including Canadian stocks. The root cause was a change to the way my data provide handled international securities prices. I've updated Stock Connector to fix the issue so that international stocks should be working correctly again.
The fix for the outage has now been implemented. My provider is testing the fix to ensure the issue is fully resolved.
IEX is not updating some stocks, starting in the morning on July 17. There's a delay of up to several hours for many symbols. The data provider (IEX) is working to resolve the issue: status
I reorganized the way that currency quotes are returned. As a customer you shouldn't notice anything different except a slight improvement to the speed of returning quotes, and some spreadsheets which were previously broken are now fixed.
I discovered an issue with long lists of stocks (100+ stocks) which sometimes caused long lists to partially update (not fully update). I was able to fix the issue and tested updating successfully up to 1000 stocks. Now paid customers (contributors) should see all their stocks updating on every refresh. (Free users still have the 50-symbol limit).
I also discovered an issue with currencies which sometimes caused the loading wheel to spin forever. That's now fixed too.
Enabled sign in with non-Google accounts for Mac users.
Updated currency logic to ping the currency/crypto servers less frequently so that limits are not encountered.
Also fixed a bug that occurs when you enter an invalid symbol in stock connector.
Some customers are experiencing an issue with currencies and cryptocurrencies which will last 3 more days, until June 30. On July 1, all currencies and cryptocurrencies should work again as expected for all customers. Stocks, indexes, ETFs, and precious metals quotes are not affected and are continuing to work correctly.
I determined that the reason for the currency outage is that the data provider has recently started enforcing stricter rate limits on currency queries. Starting each month some of the rate limits reset. I am reconfiguring Stock Connector to use fewer calls to the currency service in order to avoid further rate-limiting near the end of the month. That will ensure most customers do not ever hit rate limits for currencies in the future.
Added the ability to sign in with Google for premium features.
Added gold and silver prices.
Discovered rate-limiting issue on currencies and cryptocurrencies. Working to fix the problem.
Enabled faster performance by detecting 404 error results immediately on data requests to IEX.
I've now fixed a bug that prevented Stock Connector from responding in certain cases, and I've made several of the app's features asynchronous (so they don't block the UI thread). The issue affected some users with higher numbers of stocks and older computers. The issue caused Stock Connector to slow down and sometimes restart with a yellow "Error" message saying that Stock Connector had stopped responding and needed to be restarted.
The bug affecting some Office 2013 and 2016 users is now resolved. The root cause was lack of support for new JavaScript language features on older trident controls which are used by some standalone (perpetual) versions of Office. I was able to get copies of the older Office software and test to identify the problem and fix it so you can continue using those old Office versions.
My apologies it took so long to determine the exact issue. Please let me know if you're still experiencing any problems. Thank you!
A bug is affecting some users of Office 2013 and 2016. I'm investigating to determine the root cause.
I've now resolved the data issue from yesterday. Tickers should now be updating correctly (up to 50 for free users and unlimited for users who contributed in the last year)
Some users are experiencing an issue with last night's update that prevents stocks from updating. This is not intended and I'm working on resolving these currently - please check back tomorrow, thank you!
Starting May 1, 2023, my data provider (IEX) doubled the pricing on market data. Unfortunately, with the higher prices, I've been running Stock Connector at a loss over the last month.
In order to keep running Stock Connector sustainably, I'm making several changes:
My apologies for the increased request for contributions. I've done my best to balance higher price with more efficient data-polling.
Starting Sunday January 16, 2023, Stock Connector experiences a complete outage due to a SSL certificate that was not correctly synchronized in Microsoft Azure. I resolved the issue on Monday, January 17.
After further discussion with IEX, they have clarified that they permanently removed mutual fund support. I will investigate alternative sources for mutual fund data.
Mutual fund quotes provided by IEX had an outage beginning 5 days ago: most US mutual funds are currently not being recognized by IEX. I am following up with the provider and will give an update here once I get an estimated time when the outage will be resolved.
Tweaked visual layout to ensure that "x" buttons do not get hidden behind the scroll bar when customers have a high number of stocks.
The server upgrades have now been completed and you should not expect further interruptions.
The upgrades will address capacity issues from high server load and eliminate the server errors which sometimes occurred for free and paid users. They'll also allow me to scale more easily in the future if additional capacity is needed.
Weekend maintenance is planned on 2021-02-22 starting at 05:00:00 UTC and lasting approximately 1 day. Stock Connector will be working throughout maintenance apart from momentary downtime which can be resolved by closing and reopening Excel.
The maintenance will upgrade servers in order to resolve recent capacity issues, which have occasionally prevented the premium features from turning on over the past week.
This weekend maintenance is being performed for premium accounts. Premium features may be temporarily disabled.
5 market indexes have been added to Stock Connector, such as "^GSPC" for the S&P 500 index. See the full list on the Stock Connector info page.
Currency prices (including cryptocurrencies) are working correctly again. The issue was temporary downtime from the data provider.
Currency prices (including cryptocurrencies) are not working as of 11:00 AM Eastern Time due to an issue at the data provider. I'm working on resolving this issue and will update as more details become available.
Stock Connector was unavailable for approximately 4.5 hours at night in the Americas, from 10:00 PM Eastern Time until 2:30 AM.
This issue is now resolved and the service should be working correctly for all users. The root cause was an outage in one of Stock Connector's service providers. This is the first time in 2020 that this type of outage occurred, so I expect it to be very rare in the future.
For approximately 2.5 hours in the early morning on October 21, price information for Stock Connector was unavailable. This issue is now resolved and prices are available as normal to all.
From around 1:30 AM Eastern Time until 4:00 AM Eastern Time, no price information was being retrieved to Stock Connector. The reason for the downtime was that the data stream purchased from the provider was no longer large enough to accommodate the Stock Connector user base. I have now upgraded the service to a higher-capacity data stream to resolve the issue.
For now, the Stock Connector price will remain the same despite the increased cost. In the future, additional controls may be necessary to further limit free-tier users, and the price may be increased for Premium. As explained on the Help page, all existing Premium users will continue to have access to the features for no additional charge and will never be required to pay more.
Payments for premium features have now been re-enabled in Stock Connector. Now the purchase system works normally as it did before, via PayPal. All customers who have previously paid should continue to receive the premium features.
For approximately 1 week beginning October 7, 2020, the payment system was disabled because of a server bug. In order to maintain access to the premium features, they were temporarily enabled for all authenticated users (whether contributors or not).
With the recent increase in usage, the database which verifies premium users has been under increased stress, resulting in premium users sometimes not being recognized by Stock Connector. I have now implemented better retry logic in order to dramatically reduce the probability that a user will not be recognized.
From approximately 4pm to 6pm Eastern Time, there was a provider outage affecting the NASDAQ stock exchange. As a result, stock prices for US NASDAQ stocks were displaying yesterday's price. An escalation was raised with the IEX data provider: https://github.com/iexg/IEX-API/issues/1464
The outage is now resolved.
Fixed a bug affecting payments-processing. For the past 4 days, certain users have been unable to have their payments processed correctly. Now the issue is resolved, so anyone with a Microsoft account should be able to pay for the premium features, and everyone who has paid already should be able to access the premium features.
Began rolling out and testing subscriptions for some users. Users who contribute via the $20 payment will not need to switch to subscriptions in the future.
Added a button to display and hide help information.
In the last update, 4 buttons were broken. All have now been fixed:
Added support for international stocks in Stock Connector in 14 international exchanges. Non-US stocks have their prices updated once daily, at the end of the day.
You can now search for a company by name (eg. "Volkswagen") in Stock Connector and see the top 10 US and international stocks that match.
See the main Stock Connector help page for details on how to use international stocks. The supported exchanges are:
Stock Connector market data was down for approximately 70 minutes earlier today. The issue was very high request volume going beyond the limits of my paid live market feed service. I have now increased the limits to accommodate the higher volume of requests.
Stock Connector was down for approximately 29 hours from March 22 until March 23. The issue was a server configuration problem that has now been resolved by the service provider. Over the next few weeks I'll be setting up a backup server in case a similar issue occurs in the future.
Stock Connector went down a few hours ago. I'm investigating the issue and working with the service provider to get it resolved. Sorry for the inconvenience!
I realize there have been stability issues over the past few weeks as I've been contending with several bugs that were related to changes from my service provider. I've already fixed several and I'm working hard to fix more - please continue to send me reports of any issues that you encounter.
Today I found and fixed a significant bug in my own code which was affecting my retry logic and was preventing my service from being resilient to any reliability problems in the underlying data service. I expect that for some users it will solve the issue where stock prices sometimes don't load at all.
I'll continue to listen for reports of users who can't load their stocks. One helpful thing in these cases would be to send me a copy of your file, with personal info removed. That enables me to debug your issue on my own computer. I'm also aware of a couple other unresolved issues:
Fixed a bug that affected many users with large numbers of stocks, which prevented correct loading. All users with 100+ stocks were affected.
NASDAQ has pulled their UTP data from all services who don't pay a large monthly fee (thousands) to NASDAQ (see http://www.utpplan.com/). As a result, IEX blocked me from receiving UTP data for NASDAQ stocks (mostly tech stocks, such as MSFT, AAPL, and GOOG).
That caused a temporary bug for free users, which I've now fixed. All users can still see and connect price information for all stocks, including NASDAQ stocks, and you will continue to see that information in the future with Stock Connector.
However, because the market close data is no longer coming from NASDAQ, I don't get official close prices on those stocks. What that means is that after the markets close each day, certain stocks such as AAPL, GOOG, and MSFT may show slightly different prices from the official NASDAQ "close" price, along with close times that may be slightly different from the exact market-close time. Those prices reflect the most recent trade of that security on IEX itself. I'll start a discussion with IEX about whether anything can be done to get the exact closing prices.
Microsoft now says their bug (described below) is fixed. To get the fix, update your version of Excel and check that you have Version 1907, build 11901.20176. To update, go to File > Account > Update Options.
An Microsoft bug with Excel is causing issues for a minority of users when they Save and reopen the file with Stock Connector. For these users, closing and reopening the file may cause the recently-added stocks to be removed.
The specific affected versions of Excel are:
Microsoft is aware of the issue and has a fix planned: https://github.com/OfficeDev/office-js/issues/626. I'll post an update once I hear from Microsoft that this issue is resolved.
I fixed a bug causing certain stocks to appear with price = 0 and change -100% after-hours. This bug affected only non-paid users.
Also, I'm continuing to tune the default update timing to deal with high data costs from free users with larger numbers of stocks. I've re-enabled the fast (5-second) times for paid users and free users with under 10 stocks. For others I've increased the minimum interval to 5 minutes. I'll see how that impacts data costs and adjust as appropriate.
The cost of paying for the financial data has increased faster than expected due to high usage among free users. I need to pay for every time a stock updates, so to try to keep my costs under control, I made a couple tweaks for those users to encourage less-frequent updates.
Users who contributed money or who contribute in the future still get the fast refreshes and the Refresh button, of course.
I've found a paid data source and implemented the change which switches Stock Connector to use this new source (unfortunately, no free data source exists that is good enough). I've decided to continue offering the app for free anyway.
Based on past contribution numbers, the users who pay should be able to make up for the cost of providing the data to those who can't afford it or don't want to pay. Since the cost of the data gets very expensive for users who refresh the stocks list frequently, I plan to limit free users to wait at least 60 seconds between automatic price updates. For paid users, I'll continue to allow the fast 5-second updates, but I do plan to charge $20 for new paid users.
I'm aware that the temporary update to use the price-only IEX data has broken some users with high numbers of stocks and currencies. I'm working to resolve this issue first before I fix the % Change problem.
I've also fixed the support email links, which were broken by an unrelated issue.
As you may know, Stock Connector previously used IEX as its data provider. On Jun 1, 2019, IEX disabled general access to its free financial data, 3 years after the service was introduced. This change broke Stock Connector and many other tools across the web. Of course, it was always a known possibility that IEX would decide to shut down its free service, similar to how Yahoo shut down Stock Connector's initial source.
On Jun 17, 2017, I integrated a workaround with the old IEX API which fetches price data but not % Change. I will continue investigating ways to get a free % Change source back up and running. Please let me know if you're aware of alteratives I can use. Thank you!
I've now fixed the break caused by the data provider. All US stocks should now be returning values to Excel correctly again.
Received reports of a bug which impacted all free users. Investigated the issue and found that the external data source for US stocks had changed its API without notice. I'll update again once I'm able to resolve the issue.
Added support for cryptocurrencies and currencies. Examples:
Fixed a bug that caused values to stop updating sometimes (when successive http calls were too slow to return). This change also fixed a bug for users with more than 100 stocks. The fix also gives a small performance boost for all users.
Fixed a bug that prevented real-time prices from updating frequently enough. There was a server caching problem that stored old values, but that has now been resolved. Premium users (contributors) will now see the accurate real-time prices, and other users will now see the accurate prices delayed only by 15-20 minutes.
Fixed a bug that blocked all stock quote updates for users who also had currencies, international stocks, or mutual funds listed. (Those asset types still don't work yet though, only US stocks.)
Feedback over the past month has helped uncover several issues with the new IEX data source:
As you may know, Stock Connector previously used Yahoo as its data provider. On Nov 1, 2017, Yahoo disabled external access to its free financial data without warning, 12 years after the service was introduced. On Nov 9, 2017, Yahoo posted an official response. This change broke Stock Connector and many other tools across the web. Of course, it was always a known possibility that Yahoo would decide to shut down its free service, especially after its purchase by Verizon.
On Nov 12, 2017, I finished integrating IEX as the new data provider for Stock Connector. Although it's still a free source for US stocks and exchange-traded funds (ETFs), IEX has many differences compared to Yahoo as a data provider:
Disadvantages
I will continue investigating ways to address those disadvantages with other data sources, but I can't make any guarantees there. Please let me know if you're aware of alteratives I can use. Thank you!
For more information on Stock Connector, see the Stock Connector info page.