Choosing the right market symbol

You can locate assets by entering any of the following, listed from the most to the least accurate:

1. ISIN Number: This is an international standard used to uniquely identify securities. For example, US0378331005.
2. Ticker Symbol with a Market Suffix: Here, you combine the ticker symbol and the market where it's traded, like on Google Finance, Yahoo Finance or other similar platforms. For instance, AAPL.NASDAQ or AAPL.US. See our list of supported markets and symbols.
3. Ticker Symbol alone: Less accurate when there are multiple assets using the same ticker on different exchanges (happens a lot!). For example, AAPL.
4. Words from the Asset's Name: We recommend using the whole word for accuracy, so microsoft instead of micro.

Capitally will then provide you with a list of assets grouped by their ISIN number. Remember, the same ISIN means it's the exact same asset, just traded on different markets in their local currencies.

Where do the market prices come from?

When you pick an asset, Capitally will use the prices from the market with the longest price history. Why? Because price data quality varies between markets due to differences in liquidity and reporting. In most cases, for monitoring and comparison purposes, you want the data source with the most amount of data points.

As long as you pick the right asset, with the correct ISIN, you're good to go. For prices and returns, the exchange and the currency it quotes in don't matter. What's important is to enter the price you've paid when buying or selling AND the actual transaction currency when importing. It doesn't matter what currency the stock is priced in, as long as your transactions use the currencies you used at your brokerage.

The one place the exchange does matter is tax, where the country assigned to it decides how the position is reported. The next section covers that, and what each of the identifier fields actually drives.

What Symbol, Market, ISIN and Currency actually do

Four fields identify an asset and each drives something different. Symbol and Market, on the asset's Details tab, are mainly for your own reference and for matching symbols when importing data. ISIN does that same matching and additionally retrieves taxonomies — region, sector, category — from the data provider. Currency is the instrument's main currency. Where prices come from is set separately, in the Prices tab under Source prices using this market symbol, and is independent of the Details tab fields.

Market decides the tax country

For tax reporting, what counts is the country assigned to the exchange, not the exchange's name. If your venue isn't in the dropdown — Lang & Schwarz (LSX), for example — create a custom market and set the correct country, Germany in that case. Returns and tax are always calculated from the prices on your own transactions, never from the closing prices fetched by the price source, so the small arbitrage differences between exchanges don't reach your numbers.

Currency is the denomination, not the quote

The asset's currency is the default for new transactions and imports, and the currency the position is valued in. If the price source quotes in something else, Capitally converts the fetched prices into the asset's currency automatically. That means you can hold a US-listed asset denominated in CAD, or a GBX-quoted London line denominated in GBP, without losing anything.

ISIN is the only universal identifier

Yahoo Finance codes (0P000183Q3.L), Bloomberg codes and other proprietary identifiers won't match. When in doubt, search by ISIN.

Because identification runs on ISIN, separate share classes are separate assets with separate histories. GOOG is Class C (US02079K1079), created in the 2014 split, so it has no price data before then; GOOGL is Class A (US02079K3059) and goes back further. Pick the class you actually hold. Where a current symbol collides with a historical one, the current assignment wins.

Two fields ask for a market symbol

Source prices using this market symbol, on the Prices tab, is the price source for an asset priced from the market, and it searches the whole catalogue. Source clean prices from market symbol belongs to Market prices inside interest-based pricing, and offers bond instruments only — whatever type the asset itself is — because what it supplies is a clean quote that the asset's own accrual schedule turns into a dirty price.

Changing the market

You have full control over the assets in your project. You can change the sourced market, or just the asset's currency by editing the asset. In most cases, you won't even have to search for a symbol - the dropdown in the asset editing modal will show you the list of alternative markets and their symbols when you open it.

When you still can't find an asset

Most misses come down to how the search was typed, not to missing data. Typing in ALL CAPITALS searches for that exact ticker symbol, which often finds nothing — use mixed case (Scanway) for a broader name search, or the ticker as written (SCW). CUSIP numbers, used by US brokers such as Schwab, are frequently not recognised: convert them to the ISIN or the ticker first.

A few more things worth trying:

• An asset may still be indexed under its pre-rebrand name — K2 Internet rather than Fabrity Holding, for instance. Searching by ISIN finds it when the current company name doesn't.
• For cryptocurrencies, add the .CRYPTO suffix (ETH.CRYPTO). A bare ticker can match a delisted stock that shares the symbol and then prices your position near zero.
• If an asset should exist but nothing comes back, reset the data and prices cache in Settings → Analysis.
• Some exchanges have to be enabled on our side, so if a whole venue seems missing, tell us.

Ask us to add it

If it genuinely isn't in the database, email support with the ISIN — a ticker or fund name works too, but the ISIN is what the data provider matches on. Send several ISINs in one message for a bulk request. The provider usually responds within 24 hours and the asset is normally live in the app the next day, around noon UTC. Where an ISIN exists, it can be added in roughly 90% of cases, and European funds are almost always available on request: thousands are already indexed and more are added continuously.

While you wait

Create a custom asset and track it with manual prices. Your Buy and Sell prices produce correct returns on their own, with or without market price data. Once the instrument appears, edit the asset, open the Prices tab and switch it to the market symbol — everything you already entered stays where it is.