Mutual fund security code

[Glen Ditchfield]

On January 8, 2002 10:12 am, I wrote:
> Do mutual funds have security codes?  How do I find out what they are?

The answers seem to be "no, not really" and "it depends".  The "security 
code" is actually "whatever identifier the price quote source's 
Finance::Quote module needs", and you find them by reading the module's man 
page, or the module source itself, to see what it wants.

For instance, 'AGF Canadian Aggressive All-Cap Fund' has security code 1726 
on fundlibrary.com, and to find this out you search the web site for the fund 
-- I had to read the Perl to find the right page -- and read '1726' in the 
URL's query string.  On the other hand, a hypothetical Finance::Quote module 
that went straight to the AGF.com site would probably use the fund name as 
the security code, and extract a price from 
www.agf.com/pp001/pp002/pp002.html.

For another instance, to get security codes for TD Waterhouse, you download a 
comma-separated-values file, and read the code from column 1.  TD Waterhouse 
and fundlibrary don't use the same codes.

Frankly, I can't imagine my father-in-law doing this.