Ever since its introduction in 1982, the terminal offering has been as ubiquitous to fund managers and other investment professionals as gas stations to taxi drivers. That being said, quotation systems are often misunderstood as being highly proprietary in nature or having some back-end data that is otherwise inaccessible to accredited investors. Think about the last time you opened up Google Finance or your iPhone; were you able to retrieve some common index data “for free”? The answer is probably yes.

So why are funds still piling up annual subscription fees for DLL or feature bloat that leaves your on-prem database infrastructure exposed to injection, social attacks, or topical end-user issues associated with highly manual data entry? In this article, we have briefly identified a few alternatives that should save your fund capital, a single source of truth for your target datasets, and potentially save you from the reputational harm associated with misaligned expectations on licensing and spreadsheet risk.

1. Refinitiv / Reuters DataScope Select: Batch automation is not a new technology. APIs are nearly turnkey in 2023, with Refinitiv supporting a slew of options for dumping target financial instruments to your on-prem configurations. Data deliveries can be made on a daily level directly to your servers through FTP or cloud services, enabling the development of internal business applications through systems such as Bubble, Retool, Outystems, and others.

2. Google or Yahoo Finance: Let’s face it – these platforms aren’t going away. With quotation data being sourced directly from popular stock exchanges as well as having OAuth support in place, it is very telling that some of my friends have given up their terminal subscriptions in favour of browser-based applications.

4. Quandl: Quandl is a comprehensive financial data platform that offers a wide range of datasets, including stock prices, futures, options, and more. It provides easy access to historical and real-time financial data through its API and data feeds, allowing users to build custom applications and analytics tools.

5. Alpha Vantage: Alpha Vantage is a popular provider of financial market data, offering a robust API that covers a wide range of asset classes. It provides real-time and historical data, technical indicators, and other financial analytics tools. The platform is known for its ease of use and affordability, making it a cost-effective alternative to traditional quotation systems.

While you may not always get the depth and functionality you expect from some of these alternatives, fund managers on a budget who are constrained by expensive technology development costs are now faced with more choices than ever to build cost-effective solutions that service their endpoints. Whether it’s developing a forward curve, monthly outlook, or performing look-back analysis, data is more open than ever.

Please feel free to book a call with me. I’d love to help you navigate areas to help you save on high subscription costs, as well as getting up to speed with the possibilities.