Thanks for the tips! 
Looking over the discussion I realized I
might have been unclear. What I would like to do is download a *large*
number of values for a certain date. I understood how to do download
data for a specific stock, but any idea as to how I could download
values for all (or a sample of) companies for a specific date :-)?
something like...
 yahooSeries(symbols = c("ALL"), from = NULL, to = NULL, 
    nDaysBack = 365, quote = c("Open", "High",
"Low", "Close", "Volume"),
    aggregation = c("d", "w", "m"), returnClass =
c("timeSeries", "ts",
    "matrix", "data.frame"), getReturns = FALSE, ...)
thanks,
Mihai Nica
170 East Griffith St. G5
Jackson, MS 39201
601-914-0361
----- Original Message ----
From: Martin Maechler <maechler@stat.math.ethz.ch>
To: Matthew Keller <mckellercran@gmail.com>
Cc: Mihai Nica <mihainica@yahoo.com>; R list
<r-help@stat.math.ethz.ch>
Sent: Monday, February 5, 2007 8:01:04 AM
Subject: Re: [R] Download stock prices
Hi Matthew,
>>>>> "Matthew" == Matthew Keller
<mckellercran@gmail.com>
>>>>>     on Sun, 4 Feb 2007 23:06:46 -0500 writes:
    Matthew> Hi Mihai, You might check out the Rmetrics bundle,
    Matthew> available on the cran website. I've used its
    Matthew> fBasics library
it's the fBasics *package*; a library is something (actually
more than one thing!) different!
    Matthew> to download stock prices. Try the
    Matthew> yahooImport() function and the keystats() function
    Matthew> for downloading specific stock prices. I had to
    Matthew> fiddle with the keystats function to get it to work
    Matthew> properly, but I wrote to the writer of the library
you mean the maintainer of the *package* 
    Matthew> and it may have been fixed by now.
the function is (now) called  keystatsImport() and is part of
'fCalendar' -- which is automatically required from package
'fBasics'.
help(keystatsImport) contains several examples, unfortunately
explicitly not available through example(), but I can
successfully execute all of them -- and they do work, including
the yahooImport() one.
Martin Maechler, ETH Zurich
    Matthew> Best of luck,
    Matthew> Matt
    Matthew> On 2/4/07, Mihai Nica <mihainica@yahoo.com> wrote:
    >> gReetings:
    >> 
    >> Is there any way to download a (or a sample of a)
    >> crossection of stock market prices? Or is it possible to
    >> use get.hist.quote with a *wild card*?
    >> 
    >> Thanks,
    >> 
    >> mihai
    >> 
    >> Mihai Nica 170 East Griffith St. G5 Jackson, MS 39201
    >> 601-914-0361
    Matthew> -- Matthew C Keller Postdoctoral Fellow Virginia
    Matthew> Institute for Psychiatric and Behavioral Genetics
 
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