Stock Factor Problem

Research
1

Since the introduction of the country symbol after the stock symbol it has become more cumbersome to upload a stock factor file. Old ticker symbols which were perfectly o.k. are now coming up with error message such as this one:
Ticker CX is ambiguous. Specify country to disambiguate.

Is it possible to fix this, so that the algorithm assumes that they are all USA stocks, unless otherwise specified?

This becomes especially annoying when you have a single letter ticker symbol such as T.
Search and replace in excel will attach :USA to every letter T in the symbol list. Really, this is somewhat upsetting.

2

Did you try setting the Preferred Country to USA ? You can do it from the account popup or in Account Settings

3

Marco, thanks for the fast response.
Yes, my preferred country setting is USA.

I have resolved the problem by adding :USA to all the tickers in the downloaded csv file before I upload the file again with the new data added. This works also for the tickers which are no longer used.

Also using Existing Data > Skip works. Problem arises with Existing Data > Overwrite.

4

Hi Georg,

Like you, I find that uploading custom factors/data sets has become an incredibly worthwhile advantage enabling an edge in the investment markets. For example, the central bank is dramatically increasing its role of creating or (these days) withdrawing liquidity from capital markets. My research shows it’s the most significant factor determining market direction.

I’m also planning to load some pre-configured ETF lists of those that have passed the FACTSET Analytics Block Liquidity with a rating of 5 of 5 (indicating how easy it is to trade a 1 million USD block of the ETF). I find the FACTSET List (which should be available from FactSet) is the best way to instantly screen ETFs for ample liquidity. It’s too bad that Marco doesn’t offer it because it’s invaluable to me and many others.

In the meantime, I’ll have to screen the P123 ETF list against the FactSet liquidity database and use tickers.

Marco said: [quote]
“Did you try setting the Preferred Country to USA ? You can do it from the account popup or inAccount Settings”
[/quote]

I didn’t get that to work with the tickers I uploaded. Did you find a way to make the country code to append to the ticker automatically in the admin, as Marco suggested would happen (I think)?

Thanks!

Chris

5

Hi Chris,
The only way to upload with country code is to add :USA to all the ticker symbols.
You can do this in excel for the whole list easily, and then save the file before uploading to stock factor.

date ticker value uid
2/22/2008 AAPL:USA 1 774
2/22/2008 ANF:USA 1 137
2/22/2008 BB:USA 1 7524