Yahoo Finance API (2025)

This is a simple way to use the Yahoo web API in MATLAB.

yfinanceAPI — Download daily stock prices from Yahoo Finance into MATLAB

Pull historical daily OHLCV data for one or more tickers using Yahoo Finance’s public chart endpoint, returned as a MATLAB struct array. Includes an optional demo that renders a candlestick chart.

What this does

• Fetches Open, High, Low, Close, Volume for each requested symbol at 1-day interval.
• Returns a struct array (one element per symbol) with fields:
• o (open), h (high), l (low), c (close), v (volume)
• s (symbol), t (timestamp as MATLAB datenum)
• Works for multiple tickers in one call (e.g., {'AAPL','GOOGL'}).
• Adds realistic HTTP headers to reduce blocked requests.
• Includes a self-demo: run with no inputs to see a candlestick plot.

Syntax

data = yfinanceAPI(symbol, start_date, end_date)

Inputs

• symbol — cell array of char, e.g. {'AAPL','GOOGL'}
• start_date — char/ string, 'YYYY-MM-DD' (inclusive)
• end_date — char/ string, 'YYYY-MM-DD' (inclusive)

Output

• data — struct array (length = numel(symbol)) with fields:
• o, h, l, c, v, s, t (see above)

Example

symbols = {'AAPL','MSFT'};
start   = '2025-01-01';
finish  = '2025-03-01';
data = yfinanceAPI(symbols, start, finish);
% Convert first symbol’s timestamps to datetime and plot close
t = datetime(datestr(data(1).t));
plot(t, data(1).c, 'LineWidth', 1.2);
grid on; xlabel('Date'); ylabel('Close ($)');
title(sprintf('%s Close', data(1).s));

Candlestick demo

Calling with no arguments downloads AAPL by default and renders a candlestick chart (requires Financial Toolbox for candle).

yfinanceAPI();

Notes & caveats

• Unofficial endpoint. Yahoo Finance’s chart API is undocumented and may change or throttle. This code adds common headers and a timeout, but availability isn’t guaranteed.
• Time zone & trading days. Timestamps are daily bars from Yahoo; holidays/weekends are omitted.
• Financial Toolbox (optional). Only needed for the candlestick demo; data download works without it.
• Networking. Requires internet access and permission for webread.

Tested with

• MATLAB R2021a (should work back to R2018b+ with datetime/posixtime).
• Windows 11; should be OS-agnostic.