Published: 26 January, 2025
Sourcing a list of global stock tickers
TLDR: GitHub repository here containing JSON, Excel & CSV files for NASDAQ, NYSE, LSE, TSE, B3 stock tickers.
Finding a complete list of global stock tickers is a rather difficult task. Not least because any kind of financial data service - no matter how trite - is always going to be monetized in every conceivable way. But also because global markets are still rather disconnected, despite what any modernist politician or TV economist may have you believe.
I've been working on creating my own financial terminal as a side project for a couple of years now. I am under no illusion of taking on Bloomberg or Reuters with a commercial venture but instead have used this task as an opportunity to not only learn some new development skills for my main profession (I'm a software developer by trade) but also as an excuse to fully immerse myself in the world of financial markets as I have been developing my investment acumen & knowledge in the realm of finance.
My project is described as an "equity focused finance terminal" so the starting point would obviously be obtaining some data relating to equities. The most basic of which is a simple list of publicly listed companies with data including their stock ticker, the market on which they are traded & if possible the sector & industry the company is categorized into.
Pictured: A screenshot of my londonmarket.xyz Stock Screener which uses data discussed in this article
I mistakenly thought that this would be as simple as going into Google & searching something along the lines of "global stock tickers json download". However, every other link that I clicked on would just take me to either a paywall page or a list of 10 or so tickers before the rest of the list became obscured with a padlock requesting that I pay $300 a month for trivial data. There were a couple of free sources that I found with some major stock ticker data on them but these were significantly outdated or simply provided a ticker & company name without much more information.
So, it would seem that in order to source this information you would have to go to the source. That meant visiting the websites for each of the exchanges and seeing if they provided this information. This has worked to varying success as the information provided by each exchange varies wildly in not only it's format but also it's detail.
I have decided to start creating a single source that compiles all of the global equity ticker information into one location. If only for low-level researchers or hobbyists then I hope my repository is useful to someone other than just me. I invite anybody else who wishes to help with this project to make contributions to the public GitHub repository or get in contact with me (see here for my socials).
Global Stock Symbols GitHub Repository LINK HERE
For anybody interested, here is a list of each of the exchange sources & my comments on the data provided:
LSE London Stock Exchange (Main Market & AIM)
- Source: https://www.londonstockexchange.com/reports?tab=instruments
- Format: Excel (.xlsx)
- Review: The best presented list of traded instruments available (in my opinion). Contains lots of valuable information & presented in an easy to manage way.
NASDAQ, NYSE & AMEX
- Source: https://www.nasdaq.com/market-activity/stocks/screener
- Format: CSV (Comma as delimiter ",")
- Review: Requires running screener with filters for market but outputs nice data, also includes last closing price
Tokyo Stock Exchange
- Source: https://www.jpx.co.jp/english/markets/statistics-equities/misc/01.html
- Format: Excel (.xlsx)
- Review: Neatly formatted & regularly updated, website is hard to navigate
Frankfurt Stock Exchange
- Source: https://www.deutsche-boerse-cash-market.com/dbcm-en/instruments-statistics/statistics/listes-companies
- Format: Excel (.xlsx)
- Review: Presented neatly with markets separated across worksheets. Requires trivial effort to programmatically extract data
B3 Brazil Stock Exchange
- Source: https://www.b3.com.br/en_us/market-data-and-indices/data-services/market-data/reports/daily-bulletin/data-on-exchange-listed-and-otc-assets-available-to-the-public/
- Format: CSV (Semicolon as delimiter ";")
- Review: Quite messy and requires minor effort to get into a browseable format. Not very well sorted and hard to grasp (may be my lack of understanding of workings of the B3 exchange)