Create a portfolio of index components

[dlapish]

Hi Mark,

Is there a quick way to create a portfolio of the component companies of a specific index, such as the FTSE 100 or S&P 500? Obviously to create such a portfolio manually would be very time consuming so I wondered if you or any other poster had already found a way to do this which I could replicate.

Many thanks as always.

David

[Mark]

Hi David,

Sorry, I don't know of a shortcut way to do this, other than manually create all these investments.

[dlapish]

OK thanks, that's clear.

The reason for asking was that I would like to track the peformance of each constituent company of an index over a period of time. Yahoo Finance shows the constituents and their prices on any particular day, but does not allow you to download them (unlike the history of individual stocks).

I was thinking that maybe there was such a thing as a file or folder, like a template, which contained one share of each constituent company and which I could import or copy.

If anyone knows how I can achieve my objective and download the historical prices of index constituents as a group (preferably into Excel) please let me know.

Many thanks,

David

[StarBright2011]

David,

http://www.barchart.com/ has that feature.

I created a little video to demonstrate:

http://screencast.com/t/tU5mFVk9yuon

If the video doesn't show the steps clearly, I will documnent the steps.

[dlapish]

Thank you for that, Starbright. The video works fine, I will have a better look at it later on. Do you know if the site has UK stocks as well, eg FTSE 100?

David

[StarBright2011]

David,

It does have quote for FTSE, symbol $FTSE; however, I don't find where it lists the components.

[StarBright2011]

David,

I did find a site that provides a spreadsheet download of the components of the FTSE. I don't know the acuracy of the data.

It lists five components and after the 5th is the link for the download.:

http://topforeignstocks.com/2011/06/16/components-of-ftse-multinationals-index/

[dlapish]

Ernest,

Thanks for that tip. In the end I decided to grab the data into Excel from the Yahoo web page. It takes a bit of work to get it set up but it is good enough for my purposes.

David