Avatar
anonymous

is there an API for seeking alpha?

Avatar
-12
anonymous
  • Under review

No, but we have RSS feeds: https://seekingalpha.com/page/feeds

Avatar
13
Patton Pending

RSS feeds of articles are not even remotely an adequate substitute for an API, any more than watching a movie is an adequate substitute for eating a meal when you're hungry. It's just a different thing.

In my private notes in my personal trading database, I keep track of SA Quant ratings. Right now I have to manually check every symbol individually, every day, to see if the Quant ratings have changed. Even email alerts are too much work to manage manually for the number of tickers I follow. An API would allow me to keep my information current automatically. A premium membership is only of limited use if availing myself of the information it provides takes more work than I can reasonably do. 

I see rapidAPI has a SeekingAlpha API. I do not know where they get their information, it doesn't appear to match what I see on the site, I have no idea if it's reliable, and I don't see why I should have to pay a third party for questionably reliable access to information I've already paid for access to. I'd be willing to pay an additional fee to subscribe to an API if it was provided by SA and not by some unexplained third party relationship.

EDIT: I did look a little more closely at the rapidAPI SA API. It is not usable due to being extremely limited. It's set up to require you to have to make multiple requests to get complete information, and it rate limits you to only 5 requests per second, meaning even fetching just, say, a list of the tickers with a Quant rating over 3.5 is, rather than being a simple single requests as APIs are designed to be, is a massive, impractical programming task involving organizing and timing multiple requests. 

I have to say my extreme frustration with this is causing me to question continuing to spend money on a SA premium subscription. My broker provides most of the fundamental information I need, I don't really read the articles because there is no vetting of who can write for SA, and SA is making it extremely impractical to access the few pieces of information that only SA has that, if I could retrieve them without having to do so much work, would make the premium subscription worth it to me. 

Yesterday I made a poor trading decision because my notes were out of date, and still said a symbol's SA quant rating was "Strong Buy", when in fact it is now "Hold" and I'd missed the change because of all the manual work SA requires me to do to keep track of these things. This completely invalidates the value of SA Quant ratings for me, it constructively turns my SA premium subscription into something that actually loses me money instead of helping me profit.

Avatar
21
Patton Pending

Update: I've just canceled my premium subscription because of this issue. I can't keep spending time trying to do something you clearly don't want me to be able to do, and I can't justify paying money if I can't do it.

Only being able to access information manually, one-ticker-at-a-time by loading pages in a web browser, is useless in trading. I don't have time to sit and load web pages one-by-one to find what I need or to manually sort one-by-one through email alerts to try to piece the big picture together. As my trading process has evolved with the times, SA no longer fits into the landscape of modern tools. 

If I hear SA has created an API that I can use, so I can programmatically fetch all the information I need and have it available at my fingertips as I need it, I will re-subscribe. But for now SA is simply not worth paying for, for the reasons stated above. 

Ease of information access is becoming extremely important in trading. It's not the 1990s anymore. Keep up or get left behind.

Avatar
10
anonymous

theyre wasting resources and leaving money on the table

Avatar
jens-alpha

I am also in desperate need of a SA api. I pay to see quant, I'd like to access this programmatically

Any plans this will come at some point?

Avatar
Meddera

I would also like to use an API. Any plans?

Avatar
anonymous

API is a must-have for professional investors and traders.

Avatar
thiggins

I want a SA API, too. Currently, I collect data "manually" for some extensive spreadsheets on bond ETFs. The data are used in a risk/reward calculation and for general reference, but their value quickly fades and changable data must be renewed regularly. This is far too much work! Interactive Brokers (IBKR) has an API, and much of the data I need, so I plan to build (or modify) a portfolio dashboard in Python, with its legendary graphical display capabilities. I would like to include SA's simple risk grade in the dashboard, maybe set it next to Morningstar's risk score and Lipper's preservation ranking. It occurs to me that it might be more effective to go to a data aggregator. Seeking Alpha uses Plaid, I believe (maybe others as well, SA's data coverage is quite broad). IBKR uses Refinitiv, from what I can see. These outfits have APIs. I don't think they will tell you SA's Quant scores, however. I imagine that is an in-house exclusive product.