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Research Environment - Can't use SYMBOLS function on more than 3 entries?
Bo Wang
posted May 23, 2015

When I attempt to use symbols on more than 3 securities, the system returns an error.
This is odd as I remember the documentation states symbols function can take up to 500 securities.
top_etf = symbols('SPY','UWTI','EEM','GDX')
TypeError: symbols() takes at most 3 arguments (4 given)

Furthermore, I am also having trouble loading list of securities from CSV into the symbols function.
When I call the iloc function, symbols function seems to only read in the first security name and ignore everything else.
raw = local_csv('etf_listcsv')
sym = symbols(raw.iloc[0:3])
sym

2 responses
Karen Rubin
May 23, 2015

For your first question, you need to use a list of symbols to get the symbols function to work for all of them.

top_etf = symbols(['SPY','UWTI','EEM','GDX'])

Disclaimer

The material on this website is provided for informational purposes only and does not constitute an offer to sell, a solicitation to buy, or a recommendation or endorsement for any security or strategy, nor does it constitute an offer to provide investment advisory services by Quantopian. In addition, the material offers no opinion with respect to the suitability of any security or specific investment. No information contained herein should be regarded as a suggestion to engage in or refrain from any investment-related course of action as none of Quantopian nor any of its affiliates is undertaking to provide investment advice, act as an adviser to any plan or entity subject to the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974, as amended, individual retirement account or individual retirement annuity, or give advice in a fiduciary capacity with respect to the materials presented herein. If you are an individual retirement or other investor, contact your financial advisor or other fiduciary unrelated to Quantopian about whether any given investment idea, strategy, product or service described herein may be appropriate for your circumstances. All investments involve risk, including loss of principal. Quantopian makes no guarantees as to the accuracy or completeness of the views expressed in the website. The views are subject to change, and may have become unreliable for various reasons, including changes in market conditions or economic circumstances.

Karen Rubin
May 23, 2015

As for your second question. I've done the following before, to get the security object for each ticker in a dataframe. The full notebook where I did this is here: https://www.quantopian.com/posts/research-an-update-to-investing-in-women-led-companies

def get_SID(row):  
    temp_ticker = row['Ticker']  
    start_date = row['start_date'].tz_localize('UTC')

    row['SID'] = symbols(temp_ticker, start_date)  
    return row

CEOs = CEOs.apply(get_SID, axis=1)

I'm not sure it's the best way to do it, but it's how I've solved it.

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The material on this website is provided for informational purposes only and does not constitute an offer to sell, a solicitation to buy, or a recommendation or endorsement for any security or strategy, nor does it constitute an offer to provide investment advisory services by Quantopian.

In addition, the material offers no opinion with respect to the suitability of any security or specific investment. No information contained herein should be regarded as a suggestion to engage in or refrain from any investment-related course of action as none of Quantopian nor any of its affiliates is undertaking to provide investment advice, act as an adviser to any plan or entity subject to the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974, as amended, individual retirement account or individual retirement annuity, or give advice in a fiduciary capacity with respect to the materials presented herein. If you are an individual retirement or other investor, contact your financial advisor or other fiduciary unrelated to Quantopian about whether any given investment idea, strategy, product or service described herein may be appropriate for your circumstances. All investments involve risk, including loss of principal. Quantopian makes no guarantees as to the accuracy or completeness of the views expressed in the website. The views are subject to change, and may have become unreliable for various reasons, including changes in market conditions or economic circumstances.