File and data formats
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File and data formats

Introduction

This section describes the formats for the various data files used by FIA.

All files used by FIA are comma or tab-delimited ASCII, with an (optional) header row. Standard editing tools such as Excel or Notepad can be used to edit and update files.

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Files with suffix ‘CSV’ are assumed to be delimited with commas.
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Files with suffix ‘TXT’ are assumed to be delimited with tabs.

If your security names or classifiers include commas, ensure that you use tabs as file delimiters.

In many cases, the only files required by FIA are a security file and a portfolio file .

The security file contains details about the securities held in your portfolios, while the portfolio file contains information about the holdings and returns of these securities. If you are modeling a hierarchical portfolio with several levels of security grouping, the structure of the portfolio is also supplied in the portfolio file.

Regularly updated data for sovereign zero coupon yield curves for most currencies is available to all users as part of the subscription package. However, should you wish to use your own data, we also describe the formats for these files.

Numerous sample data files are supplied here to serve as examples and to help you set up your own files, and we suggest you refer to these while reading this section.

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Be careful when editing data files using Excel. Even if you save a file in Excel as CSV without making any changes, you may find that date formats have changed and numbers are converted from decimal to scientific notation. If FIA is generating unexpected results, look at your raw data using a text editor such as Notepad++.

File format definitions

🗃️Security data🗃️Portfolio and benchmark data🗃️Yield curve data🗃️FX data🗃️Index data🗃️Unit price data📆Date formats