Bloomberg BHD function with ISIN

calendar_today Asked Nov 19, 2013
thumb_up 6 upvotes
history Updated April 16, 2026

Question posted 2013 · +7 upvotes

I have to download historical end of day data for a huge list of stocks. I found on the bloomberg excel add-in the function BDH that is very useful. That is what I need but there is an issue: my stocks are identified by ISINs and i have tried in many way to put the ISINs in the first field of the function but it doesn’t work. The function isn’t able to identify the security by the ISIN despite the fact that is reported as security identifier in the bloomberg formula syntax: look at slide 24 here http://lgdata.s3-website-us-east-1.amazonaws.com/docs/205/56376/bloomberg%20excel%20desktop%20guide.pdf

Accepted answer +6 upvotes

The problem is that an isin does not identify the exchange, only an issuer.

Let’s say your isin is US4592001014 (IBM), one way to do it would be:

  • get the ticker (in A1):

    =BDP("US4592001014 ISIN", "TICKER") => IBM

  • get a proper symbol (in A2)

    =BDP("US4592001014 ISIN", "PARSEKYABLE_DES") => IBM XX Equity

    where XX depends on your terminal settings, which you can check on CNDF <Go>.

  • get the main exchange composite ticker, or whatever suits your need (in A3):

    =BDP(A2,"EQY_PRIM_SECURITY_COMP_EXCH") => US

  • and finally:

    =BDP(A1&" "&A3&" Equity", "LAST_PRICE") => the last price of IBM US Equity

4 code variants in this answer

  • Variant 1 — 1 lines, starts with =BDP("US4592001014 ISIN", "TICKER") => IBM
  • Variant 2 — 1 lines, starts with =BDP("US4592001014 ISIN", "PARSEKYABLE_DES") => IBM XX Equi…
  • Variant 3 — 1 lines, starts with =BDP(A2,"EQY_PRIM_SECURITY_COMP_EXCH") => US
  • Variant 4 — 1 lines, starts with =BDP(A1&" "&A3&" Equity", "LAST_PRICE") => the last price o…

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