This article describes where you can find historical price and adjusted close data within Yahoo! Finance. This article also includes answers to the following questions:

• What is the adjusted close?
• How is the adjusted close determined?
• Do you include dividends in the adjusted close?

Yahoo! Finance offers access to historical price data in tabular format for several timescales: "Daily", "Weekly", and "Monthly". "Dividends Only" is also provided as filtering option. The historical prices feature includes notations for all splits and dividend distributions during the date range selected. Open, high, low, and close values are not adjusted for splits or dividends. An additional column, Adjusted Close, is provided to show the close price adjusted for all splits and dividends.

On a security's Historical Prices page, you can choose the date range of the data you would like to display, change the ticker symbol query, or switch to a different timeframe format. If the data requested is beyond the range of historical prices available through Yahoo! Finance, all available data within the range will be displayed. Historical prices typically do not go back further than 1970.

There is currently no restriction to the amount of historical price data you can request, however, only 66 rows are displayed on a single page. To see all the data you've requested, either click the Next/Last links to view additional pages or the Download to Spreadsheet link at the bottom of the page. Note that dividend information is not included in the downloaded spreadsheet. It can, however, be downloaded separately when the Dividends Only radio button is selected.

• Daily historical prices provide you with the daily open, high, low, close, and volume for each trading day in the chosen date range.
• Weekly historical prices retrieve the open trade from the first trading day for the week, the high and low price quotes of the week, and the closing price on the last trading day of the week. The weekly volume is the average daily volume for all trading days in the reported week.
• Monthly historical prices report the open trade from the first trading day of the month, the high and low price quotes for the month, and the closing price on the last trading day of the month. The monthly volume is the average daily volume for all trading days in the reported month.
• Historical Dividends report the dividend distributed by a company and the ex-dividend date of the distribution.
• Adjusted Close provides the closing price for the requested day, week, or month, adjusted for all applicable splits and dividend distributions. Data is adjusted using appropriate split and dividend multipliers, adhering to Center for Research in Security Prices (CRSP) standards.
  • Split multipliers are determined by the split ratio. For instance, in a 2 for 1 split, the pre-split data is multiplied by 0.5.
  • Dividend multipliers are calculated based on dividend as a percentage of price, primarily to avoid negative historical pricing. For example, when a $0.08 cash dividend is distributed on Feb 19 (ex-date), and the Feb 18 closing price was 24.96, the pre-dividend data is multiplied by (1-0.08/24.96) = 0.9968. Below is a detailed example of adjusted close calculations.

Example: Adjusted Close Calculations

    2/13/03 Close = 46.99
    2/14/03 Close = 48.30
    2/18/03 Split = 2:1
    2/18/03 Close = 24.96
    2/19/03 Cash Dividend = 0.08 (ex-date)
    2/19/03 Close = 24.53

    Split Multiplier = 0.5
    Dividend Multiplier = 1 - (0.08/24.96) = 0.9968

    2/13/03 Adj. Close = 0.5 * 0.9968 * 46.99 = 23.42
    2/14/03 Adj. Close = 0.5 * 0.9968 * 48.30 = 24.07
    2/18/03 Adj. Close = 0.9968 * 24.96 = 24.88
    2/19/03 Adj. Close = 24.53

A "Download to Spreadsheet" link is available at the bottom of each historical table. Selecting this option allows you to download the data as a .CSV file for use with a spreadsheet program. Dividend data can be separately downloaded by selecting the Dividends Only radio button and then clicking the Download to Spreadsheet link.

In the event you are in need of assistance with financial terminology, go to Yahoo!'s financial glossary.