How to Import US Stock Symbol List in Free Charting Software, Ninja Trader

Ninja Trader is a free charting software, which allows traders to analyze stock charts using numerous technical indicators. Before users can access the online stock charts though, they need to import the stock symbol list including the stock symbols that they are interested in trading. The task might sound easy but there are a couple of drawbacks, especially if you are a new trader. Regarding US stock exchanges I have already posted a complete list of stocks containing stock symbols from NASDAQ, NYSE and AMEX in Excel format. It’s now time to examine how to import that stock list into NinjaTrader.

The Excel spreadsheet includes all the data anyone can download from the NASDAQ website. If you downloaded the file in that post, you already found 6,500 stock symbols! The stock data provider however includes a couple of stock symbols more than once, followed by special characters like / and ^, which although useful for discriminating different stock characteristics, they will get you in trouble when you try importing into Ninja Trader. Therefore they need to be deleted prior of importing.

First I sorted the stock list by market capitalization, so that I omit stocks of less than 1 Billion market cap. The symbol list was reduced to 1,900 companies but if you tried importing, the stock trading software would deny completing the task due to the special characters in some of the symbols. I went on and used “Find and Replace” function of Microsoft Excel to delete the duplicate stock symbols and keep one symbol per stock. That brought the list of stocks down to about 1,800 and then converted the symbols list into a text document for better formatting.

Download the stock symbol list (txt – 7KB)

Now that you have a complete list of US stocks in your computer, open the text document and copy the list. Load the stock charting software, go to File – Utilities – Import Stock Symbol List and paste the stock symbols into the white space you find in the new window. You also need to select or create a new instrument list like the “Nasdaq” I used, where all the new stock symbols are going to be imported.

When the import is complete, NinjaTrader will let you know of the import results and you can begin using the charting software.

 The next steps include opening a new Market Analyzer window (found at File), adding a new instrument list in the Analyzer (left-click and pick the list you already created during the import) and connecting to Kinetick service (File – Connect). You will soon realize that the instrument list in the Market analyzer will be getting updated by the latest and free Kinetick End-of-Day data! In a matter of seconds you can type in any stock symbol into the charts and all the latest data will be plotted onto the stock graphs!

I have used the exact same stock symbol list for months to monitor and analyze end-of-day data of US stocks. Ninja Trader combined with Kinetick offers the easiest and cost-free way to keep track of the US stock exchanges. Besides it’s a great trading software to learn technical analysis with up to date stock data and create your custom technical indicators.