Defunct currencies

[Bill Hackney]

I'm a UK-based user running Money 14.0.120.1105, and using MSMoneyQuotes to get price and currency updates.

Having seen some recent chat in this Group about exchange rates, I was looking at the exchange rates that MSMoneyQuotes is trying to obtain from MSN Money, by following what MSMoneyQuotes is doing in verbose mode.

It tries to resolve symbols such as GBPATS (Austrian schilling) and GBPBEF (Belgian franc), and other currencies that disappeared when countries adopted the Euro.  I can see it is trying to resolve those currencies because they exist in Money.  But MSMoneyQuotes can't resolve those symbols because they don't exist on MSN Money.

I presume that the currencies should remain in Money because there may be pre-Euro transaction history in those currencies.  In any case, I can't see an obvious way to delete a currency.

But the thing that has me foxed is that there is a "This country/region uses the Euro" option which would appear to allow the user to set the legacy currency (e.g. Belgian franc) as being for a country that has now adopted the Euro, but this option is greyed-out (for all currencies).  Could that be because the base currency for my Money file is GBP, not EUR?

I can also see that unchecking the "Update exchange rate online" option doesn't stop MSMoneyQuotes from attempting to resolve the symbol.

It isn't a big deal - MSMoneyQuotes failing to resolve a currency symbol that no longer exists isn't a problem.  I was just trying to do some housekeeping to tidy up my Money file/settings, to avoid MSMoneyQuotes doing more work than it needed to.  But grateful for any thoughts on why the Euro checkbox is greyed out.

[Cal Learner]

I am using Money Plus Sunset, so am not going to see the same thing.

I have never seen  MSMoneyQuotes looking for a currency symbol. But then all of my accounts and base currency are USD.

1.  Do you have an account specified to use each of the currencies that  MSMoneyQuotes attempts to fetch, or is it trying to fetch the whole slew of currencies?
2.  If only a few, what symbols does  MSMoneyQuotes try to look up? What I am thinking is that maybe the right entry in SymbolMap.csv might deliver the right rate. Alternatively, maybe some entry in SymbolMap.csv would make that look-up give up sooner.
3.  My  "This country/region uses the Euro" selections are also greyed-out.

[Bill Hackney]

Hi Cal

MSMoneyQuotes appears to attempt to find all currencies which exist in Money, regardless of whether there are any accounts held in that currency, or if there have been any transactions in that currency.  Currencies are the first thing it resolves.  This is what I am seeing in MSMoneyQuotes:

It whizzes through each currency, so a missing currency on MSN Money doesn't slow anything down, hence I'm not sure that adding anything to SymbolMap.csv would make any difference.

[Cal Learner]

If you have not been using the -m option, I suggest you do so. https://gaiersoftware.com/Money/DetailsAndHelp The first time will generate  SymbolMap.csv into the current folder. If your  SymbolMap.csv does not contain the currency symbols, try adding these 46 lines to speed things and reduce traffic:

GBPARS,avy9p2
GBPAUD,avy9ur
GBPBOB,avyath
GBPBRL,avyau2
GBPCAD,avyb9c
GBPCHF,avyilh
GBPCLP,avybhw
GBPCNY,avybkr
GBPCOP,avybnm
GBPCZK,avyc2w
GBPDKK,avyc5r
GBPHHD,avyddm
GBPHUF,avydgh
GBPIDR,avydp2
GBPJPY,avyelh
GBPKRW,avyecw
GBPNZD,avygbh
GBPNOK,avygk2
GBPPEN,avyh27
GBPPHP,avyh52
GBPSEK,avyiim
GBPSGD,avyi4c
GBPTHB,avyiu2
GBPTWD,avyioc
GBPZAR,avyia2
GBPEUR,avycmw
GBPUSD,avyjhw
GBPGTQ,avyd27
GBPMAD,avyfw7
GBPTND,avyizr
GBPDZD,avy9m7
GBPILS,avydur
GBPMYR,avyff2
GBPBWP,avyar7
GBPKES,avyea2
GBPNAD,avyg5r
GBPBHD,avya4c
GBPJOD,avye4c
GBPTWD,avyefr
GBPOMR,avygmw
GBPPKR,avygpr
GBPQAR,avyhar
GBPSAR,avyhrw
GBPAED,avyjf2
GBPVND,avyjtc
GBPINR,avydm7

 

That does not address the ones that are not recognized. That could be a later thing to address. I understand this does not address your main points, but using the map can reduce the load on the server by not needing the look-up part.

[Stephen Google]

The latest UK version of Money is Money 2005, installation file Money2005-UK-QFE2.exe. I have no problems using this version with MSMoneyQuotes.

[Mike Wylde]

I see the same as Bill Hackney and it takes a lot of time if you run it while money is open. (Share price update is virtually instantaneous, it is just the currency hunt that is slow). Curiously if you run it with money closed (with the switch enabled to start money) it seems much quicker.

Of course if you run it without the exchange rates switch (is that -c?) the whole thing is avoided but I do want to update USD and Euro to GBP rates.

I corresponded with Dan when this version came out, he said he might look into how to filter down the currencies it looks for but he clearly hasn't got round to it.

[Bill Hackney]

Interested to see that it takes a lot of time for currencies to be updated for you,  Mike.

I have the -o -a -c -m -v switches set for MSMoneyQuotes, through a shortcut, and use SymbolMap for stocks (to answer Cal's earlier point).  When MSMoneyQuotes goes to update prices every 15 minutes, whilst it still tries to resolve all of the currencies each time, it takes little time (maybe three seconds) to fetch the exchange rates for the current currencies that it has resolved.  Before that, the resolving of the currencies takes maybe six or seven seconds, presumably a bit slower because there are some currencies (like Belgian franc, which I don't appear to be able to remove from my Money file) that it can't find on MSN Money.

Cal, to your point, adding current currencies to SymbolMap may speed up those currencies being resolved, but I don't think that it will deal with the fact that MSMoneyQuotes will still try to find the latest exchange rates for the defunct currencies (the ones that are in my Money file, but not in SymbolMap) by trying to find them on MSN Money's servers.  Or am I wrong?

[Cal Learner]

Bill said

 Cal, to your point, adding current currencies to SymbolMap may speed up those currencies being resolved, but I don't think that it will deal with the fact that MSMoneyQuotes will still try to find the latest exchange rates for the defunct currencies (the ones that are in my Money file, but not in SymbolMap) by trying to find them on MSN Money's servers.  Or am I wrong?

I don't have Money 2005. One of the users of   MSMoneyQuotes with Money 2005 might turn on the -v switch to check if the currencies are being fetched. That needless fetching may have been removed by the time Money Plus (would have been Money 2008) came out.

Three seconds every 15 minutes seems like an unnecessary load on the MSN server.

I am thinking that in addition to what I had proposed earlier, you add these additional lines that were generating symbol not found:

GBPATS,Symbol
GBPBEF,Symbol
GBPDEM,Symbol
GBPECS,Symbol
GBPFIM,Symbol
GBPFRF,Symbol
GBPGBP,Symbol
GBPGRD,Symbol
GBPIEP,Symbol
GBPITL,Symbol
GBPLUF,Symbol
GBPMXP,Symbol
GBPNLG,Symbol
GBPPLZ,Symbol
GBPPTE,Symbol
GBPRUR,Symbol
GBPESP,Symbol
GBPVEB,Symbol
GBPTRL,Symbol
GBPGHC,Symbol
GBPZWD,Symbol

which will fail if you leave Symbol as Symbol. But maybe that fail is faster. If you change Symbol to avyjhw (which is GBPUSD) it might be faster still, since that number, which does not matter, will be found, and likely already cached. Just an idea. So my point is to put less load on the MSN server for something that does not matter.

[Mike Wylde]

My shortcut has -r -o -m -v -c switches set.

It takes 60-90 seconds to run, a bit variable. Of this the time dealing with stocks is negligible.

With -c switched off, it's 2 or 3 seconds for 63 securities, all set in symbol map.

I've never tried a currency in symbol map, didn't realise you could.

If the two rates I want - GBPUSD and GBPEUR - are in symbol map, maybe it won't need -c switch on?

[Mike Wylde]

No it ignores them - it says read 65 symbol mappings, updating 63 securities.

Do I need to set something else?

[Cal Learner]

You are on to something. I don't normally use the -c switch. I just tried it with my Money Plus, and I did indeed get the currency price fetches. 

Bill, could you take out the -c switch when you use -a? Or maybe run with -c only once per day?

[Bill Hackney]

So, I've done a bit of testing.

As Mike confirmed, adding currencies (e.g. GBPUSD, avyjhw) to SymbolMap doesn't appear to work, because MSMoneyQuotes doesn't appear to recognise them.  Maybe it is because their instrument type is FOREX.  Likewise, adding GBPATS,Symbol doesn't appear to spoof MSMoneyQuotes - it still tries to resolve GBPATS to MSN Money and, when it fails, MSMoneyQuotes updates Money with a rate of 0.000000 for GBPATS (and all of the other defunct currencies).

Based on what's in this thread, I thought I'd then add an asset - US:GBPUSD - to my Porfolio, as an Index, and with a holding of 0.  I didn't need to add it to SymbolMap because MSMoneyQuotes hapily pulls in the exchange rate from MSN Money for that "index" wthout needing the mapping.

However, having a currency as an asset/index doesn't update the currency table in Money.  I can see that because MSMoneyQuotes captured a rate of 1.2429 for GBPUSD as a currency and, in the same call, captured 1.2427 for US:GBPUSD as an asset/index.  It was the former that got written into the currency table.

So, call me selfish, but I will leave the -c switch in the shortcut, so that MSMoneyQuotes can keep fetching GBPUSD and GBPEUR quotes (which, like Mike, are really the only ones that I need) every 15 minutes.  I appreciate that means that other currencies will continue to be fetched from MSN Money, and MSMoneyQuotes will continue to try and resolve all of the currencies every 15 minutes with the MSN Money servers.  That's up to 96 calls a day.  Hopefully the MSN Money servers aren't fazed by that.

And I will leave the US:GBPUSD "asset" in my Portfolio ..... because it will be quite nice to have the "Price History" of historic exchange rates.

The only other thing I think I could do is to use the -i option with a csv file that has captured GBPUSD and GBPEUR exchange rates from FT.com, and turn off the -c switch; or use msmquote.  But that is just too much of a faff.

Unfortunately none of this answers why "This country/region uses the Euro" is greyed out.