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title, keywords, excerpt, description, geekdocCollapseSection
| title | keywords | excerpt | description | geekdocCollapseSection |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| OpenBB Terminal Documentation | getting started, openbb, api, beginner guide, how to use openbb, openbb keys, openbb terminal, openbb, terminal | This page guides you how to use the OpenBB terminal, developed by OpenBB. | The OpenBB Documentation provides guidance on how to use the OpenBB Terminal, a free, custom built financial terminal that will help you make more informed decisions, faster. | true |
Introduction
OpenBB is a leading open source investment research software platform for accessing and analyzing financial market data. We represent millions of investors who want to leverage state-of-the-art data science and machine learning technologies to make sense of raw unrefined data. Our mission is to make investment research effective, powerful and accessible to everyone.
The OpenBB Terminal is Free and Open-Source (FOSS)
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Why Python?
Python is one of the most used programming languages due to its simplified syntax and shallow learning curve. On top of this, it is highly used in data science and academia world (particularly on finance, economics or business related degrees). This is very important, as it is the first time in history that users - regardless of their background - can so easily add features to an investment research platform.
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Why Open Source?
An open source product allows for higher quality, lower costs, more transparency, and faster go-to-market due to the strong community created. There is no point in re-inventing the wheel for financial theory that has been around for decades, thus users can adapt the platform to their needs or even build proprietary features on top of our infrastructure.
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Why Free?
We believe that everyone should be able to have the same tooling to do investment research. By leveraging free API tiers, we can allow users to have access to a vast range of information for free. On the other hand, we want users that are willing to subscribe to premium API keys from certain data providers to be able to take advantage of that on OpenBB Terminal - this is where we see a monetization opportunity, a revenue share with data providers for connecting our users to their resources.
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Importing and Exporting data
The terminal allows for users to import their own proprietary datasets to use on our econometrics menu. In addition, users are allowed to export any type of data to any type of format whether that is raw data in Excel or an image in PNG. This is also ideal for finance content creation.
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OpenBB SDK and Customizable notebook reports
Use our OpenBB Terminal environment to access raw data through a Jupyter Notebook and play with it accordingly. Or just create customizable notebook reports for your colleagues and friends doing research on a particular asset or a macroeconomic event impact on said asset. The possibilities are endless.
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Advanced user and routines
Navigate through 750+ terminal features using fast shortcuts and leverage auto-complete functionality. Jump from looking into your portfolio to comparing the financials of those companies in a few seconds. Leverage our routines implementation to run analysis while you drink your coffee or tea.
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Accessing the OpenBB Terminal
The OpenBB Terminal can be directly installed on your computer via our installation program. Within this section, you are guided through the installation process and how to launch the program. If you are a developer, please have a look here. If you struggle with the installation process, please don't hesitate to reach us on Discord or visit our contact page.
Installation for Windows
The process starts off by downloading the installer, see below for how to download the most recent release:
- Go to the OpenBB website.
- Click on the
Downloadbutton in the Windows Installer section.
When the file is downloaded, use the following steps to run the OpenBB Terminal:
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Step 1: Double-click the .exe file that got downloaded to your Downloads folder
You will most likely receive the error below stating "Windows protected your PC". This is because the installer is still in beta phase, and the team has not yet requested verification from Windows.
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Step 2: Click on More info and select Run anyway to start the installation process
Proceed by following the steps. Do note that if you wish to install the application to "Program Files" that you will have to run the resulting application as Administrator.
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Step 3: Double-click on the application that appeared on your Desktop, you are now able to run the OpenBB Terminal
The first time this takes a bit longer to load, this can take up to a few minutes.
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Installation for MacOS
The process starts off by downloading the installer, see below for how to download the most recent release:
- Go to the OpenBB website.
- Click on the
Downloadbutton in the macOS Installer section.
When the DMG file is downloaded, use the following steps to run the OpenBB Terminal:
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Step 1: Open the downloaded OpenBB Terminal.dmg and copy OpenBB Terminal folder into your Applications
Open the OpenBB Terminal.dmg file that got saved to your "Downloads" folder and drag the "OpenBB Terminal" folder into "Applications" folder. A link to the Applications folder is presented on the screen.
Note that this should take some time as it is extracting the files from the .dmg file.
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Step 2: Open the OpenBB Terminal app in the folder that you have just copied to your Applications.
During first launch if you get a message saying that the application can't be launched, do the following:
Right-Click the app and select Open. You will see a message saying that macOS was not able to check whether the application contains malicious software. Click Open to proceed.
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Troubleshooting: Allow the application to run by going into your settings
If you have trouble launching the app because of security settings and the "Right-click and Open" approach from Step 2 of these instructions doesn't work, go to System Preferences > Security & Privacy > General. You should see a message at the bottom that says that the file "was blocked from use because it is not from an identified developer". Click on Allow anyway or Open anyway.
Structure of the OpenBB Terminal
The OpenBB Terminal is based off the Command Line Interface (CLI) which is installed by default on every computer. By opening the application you have installed via "Accessing the OpenBB Terminal", you are greeted with the following interface:
The OpenBB Terminal is centered around keyboard input. To navigate and perform analysis you will have to type in the name of the command followed by an ENTER (⏎). If you wish to see information about the OpenBB Terminal you can do so by typing about and then press ENTER (⏎). As you are typing, you will notice that you receive suggestions, by using the DOWN (⌄) arrow and pressing ENTER (⏎) you can select the command and execute it.
Throughout the entire terminal, the same set of colors are used which all share the same representation. This is structured as follows:
- Light Blue: represents commands.
- Dark Blue: represents menus, also recognizable by the
>in front. - Orange: represents titles and headers.
- Yellow: represents descriptions of a parameter or variable.
- White: represents text, usually in combination with a description that is in Yellow.
Explanation of Menus
Menus, depicted in Dark Blue, take you to a new section of the terminal referred
to as a menu. For example, if you wish to view information about stocks, you can do so by typing stocks and pressing ENTER (⏎).
This opens a new menu as depicted below.
Depending on the menu you are in, you are presented with a new set of commands (see Explanation of Commands)
and menus you can select. There are interactions in place between each menu. For example, when selecting a company within
the stocks menu, the terminal will remember your selection when you visit the fa or options menu.
See Introduction to Stocks for more information.
Pro tip: you can quickly jump between menus by using a forward slash (/). For example, if I want to access the options
menu, I can type /stocks/options to instantly arrive at this menu. You can do this from any location within the
OpenBB Terminal!
Explanation of Commands
Commands, depicted in Light Blue, execute an action or task. For example, the commands that you are able to use from any menu in the terminal (see Explanation of Menus) are as follows:
cls: clears the screen, by executing this command you are left with an empty screen.help,hor?: displays the menu that you are currently on.quit,qor..: allows for navigation through the menu. E.g. if you typestockspressENTER(⏎) and then useqand pressENTER(⏎) you return to where you started. Validate this by typing?and pressingENTER(⏎).support: allows you to submit bugs, questions and suggestions.about: this opens the related guide, linking to this website. It also has the ability to open a guide to a specific command. For example, within thestocksmenu,about candleopens this guide.wiki: search for a given expression on the Wikipedia without leaving the terminal.
Continuing with the example mentioned at quit, revisit the stocks menu and look at the commands. At the top you
will see a command named load. To understand what this command can do, you can use load -h followed by ENTER (⏎). The -h stands for help and every command will have this feature. This will return the following:
2022 May 19, 05:27 (🦋) /stocks/ $ load -h
usage: load [-t TICKER] [-s START] [-e END] [-i {1,5,15,30,60}] [-p] [-f FILEPATH] [-m] [-w] [-r {ytd,1y,2y,5y,6m}] [-h] [--source {yf,av,iex,polygon}]
Load stock ticker to perform analysis on. When the data source is Yahoo Finance, an Indian ticker can be loaded by
using '.NS' at the end, e.g. 'SBIN.NS'. American tickers do not have this addition, e.g. AMZN.
optional arguments:
-t TICKER, --ticker TICKER
Stock ticker (default: None)
-s START, --start START
The starting date (format YYYY-MM-DD) of the stock (default: 2019-07-01)
-e END, --end END The ending date (format YYYY-MM-DD) of the stock (default: 2022-07-05)
-i {1,5,15,30,60}, --interval {1,5,15,30,60}
Intraday stock minutes (default: 1440)
-p, --prepost Pre/After market hours. Only works for 'yf' source, and intraday data (default: False)
-f FILEPATH, --file FILEPATH
Path to load custom file. (default: None)
-m, --monthly Load monthly data (default: False)
-w, --weekly Load weekly data (default: False)
-r {ytd,1y,2y,5y,6m}, --iexrange {ytd,1y,2y,5y,6m}
Range for using the iexcloud api. Note that longer range requires more tokens in account (default: ytd)
-h, --help show this help message (default: False)
--source {yf,av,iex,polygon}
Data source to select from (default: yf)
For more information and examples, use 'about load' to access the related guide.
This shows you all arguments the command has. These are additional options you can provide to the command. Each
default value is also displayed which is used when you do not select this option. For example, if I would use the
stock ticker
of Amazon (AMZN, which can also be found with search amazon), I can use load AMZN which will return the following:
2022 May 19, 05:27 (🦋) /stocks/ $ load AMZN
Loading Daily AMZN stock with starting period 2019-05-15 for analysis.
Datetime: 2022 May 19 05:33
Timezone: America/New_York
Currency: USD
Market: OPEN
Company: Amazon.com, Inc.
AMZN Performance
┏━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━┓
┃ 1 Day ┃ 1 Week ┃ 1 Month ┃ 1 Year ┃ YTD ┃ Volatility (1Y) ┃ Volume (10D avg) ┃ Last Price ┃
┡━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━┩
│ -3.34 % │ 1.65 % │ -32.26 % │ -33.71 % │ -37.14 % │ 31.36 % │ 5.51 M │ 2142.25 │
└─────────┴────────┴──────────┴──────────┴──────────┴─────────────────┴──────────────────┴────────────┘
The default values you see within load -h have been inputted here. E.g. the starting period is 2019-05-15. I can
decide to change these default values by calling the argument and inputting a different value.
Whenever you wish to apply an optional argument, you use the related shortcode, e.g. -s or --start. Then, if there
is an additional word behind the argument (in this case there is, which is START) it implies the argument expects you
to define a value. Within the documentation you can read that the format must be YYYY-MM-DD implying that 2010-01-01
will be valid. If there is not an additional word behind it, it is enough to write down load AMZN -p (which refers to
the prepost optional argument)
Let's change the starting and ending period of the data that is being loaded in by doing the following:
2022 May 19, 05:38 (🦋) /stocks/ $ load AMZN -s 2005-01-01 -e 2010-01-01
Loading Daily AMZN stock with starting period 2005-01-01 for analysis.
Datetime: 2022 May 19 05:43
Timezone: America/New_York
Currency: USD
Market: OPEN
Company: Amazon.com, Inc.
AMZN Performance
┏━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━┓
┃ 1 Day ┃ 1 Week ┃ 1 Month ┃ 1 Year ┃ Period ┃ Volatility (1Y) ┃ Volume (10D avg) ┃ Last Price ┃
┡━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━┩
│ -3.51 % │ -3.18 % │ -2.87 % │ 162.32 % │ 203.73 % │ 49.78 % │ 8.53 M │ 134.52 │
└─────────┴─────────┴─────────┴──────────┴──────────┴─────────────────┴──────────────────┴────────────┘
We can check that this period has changed by looking into the candle chart with candle. This, again shares the same -h argument. This results in the following which indeed depicts our
selected period.
2022 May 19, 05:44 (🦋) /stocks/ $ candle
As mentioned in the Explanation of Menus, some information also transfers over to other menus and this includes the
loaded market data from load.
So, if you would visit the ta menu (which stands for Technical Analysis) you will see that, by running any command, the selected period above is depicted again. Return to the Stocks menu again by using q and use it again to return to the home screen which can be shown with ?.
Explanation of Scripts
The .openbb scripts offer the ability to automatically run a set of commands in the form of a routine. Furthermore,
the scripts can be adapted, and documented, at any moment giving the user full control over the type of analysis you wish
to do (and repeat). This can fundamental research, understanding market movements, finding hidden gems and even
doing advanced statistical/econometric research.
For a thorough guide on how to setup these files, please see the Scripts & Routines guide.
Importing and Exporting Data in the OpenBB Terminal
The OpenBBUserData folder's default location is the home of the system user account. The location of this folder can be set by the user from the /settings menu. This folder is where exported files are saved, it is also where files being imported to the Terminal functions are kept. These include all things user-created:
- Screener presets
- Portfolio files
- Exported files
- Files to be imported by various functions
- Styles and themes
- Preferred data sources
- Anonymized usage logs
Accessing other sources of data via API keys
Within this menu you can define your, often free, API key from various platforms like Alpha Vantage, FRED, IEX, Twitter, DeGiro, Binance and Coinglass. API keys are in essence a set of random characters that is unique to you.
You can access this menu from the homepage with keys which will open the menu as shown below:
Within this menu you are able to set your API keys to access the commands that require that key. You can do so by typing the command followed by the API key, for example: fred a215egade08a8d47cfd49c849658a2be. When you press ENTER (⏎) the terminal will test whether this API key works. If it does, you receive the message defined, test passed and if it does not, you receive the message defined, test failed.
To figure out where you can obtain the API key, you can enter the command (e.g. av) and press ENTER (⏎) or use the table below. We recommend that you gradually obtain and set keys whenever you wish to use features that require an API key. For example, if you are interested in viewing recent news about a company, you should set the API key from the 'News API'.
Available Menus Within the OpenBB Terminal
There is a large collection of (sub) menus available. Here, the asset class and other menus are described. To find a detailed description and explanation of its usage for each menu, click on the corresponding link to visit the introduction page.
The asset class menus are as follows:
- Introduction to Stocks: access historical pricing data, options, sector and industry analysis, and overall due diligence.
- Introduction to Crypto: dive into onchain data, tokenomics, circulation supply, nfts and more.
- Introduction to ETF: explore exchange traded funds, historical pricing, holdings and screeners.
- Introduction to Forex: see foreign exchanges, quotes, forward rates for currency pairs and Oanda integration.
- Introduction to Funds: discover mutual funds, general overviews, holdings and sector weights.
The other menus are as follows:
- Introduction to Economy: explore global macroeconomic data including interest and inflation rates, GDP and its components, futures, yield curves and treasury rates.
- Introduction to Alternative: explore alternative datasets such as COVID and open source metrics.
- Introduction to Econometrics: perform (advanced) regression techniques and statistical tests on custom datasets to understand relationships for both time series and panel data.
- Introduction to Portfolio: understand how your portfolio evolved over time, what assets contributed the most to this performance, compare this to a benchmark and make adjustments via various portfolio optimization techniques.
- Introduction to Dashboards: see interactive dashboards using voila and jupyter notebooks.
- Introduction to Reports (Work in Progress): create customizable research reports through jupyter notebooks.
Customizing the terminal
To adjust the lay-out and settings of the OpenBB Terminal you can access the settings menu. This menu allows you to
tweak how the terminal behaves. This includes the following:
dtadds or removes the datetime from the flair (which is next to the emoji).flairallows you to change the emoji that is used.langgives the ability to change the terminal language. At this moment, the terminal is only available in English.exportdefines the folder you wish to export data you acquire from the terminal. Use quotes for custom locations.tzallows you to change the timezone if this is incorrectly displayed for you.autoscalingautomatically scales plots for you if enabled (when green).pheightsets the percentage height of the plot (graphs) displayed (if autoscaling is enabled).pwidthsets the percentage width of the plot (graphs) displayed (if autoscaling is enabled).heightsets the height of the plot (graphs) displayed (if autoscaling is disabled).widthsets the width of the plot (graphs) displayed (if autoscaling is disabled).dpirefers to the resolution that is used for the plot (graphs)backendallows you to change the backend that is used for the graphsmonitorchoose which monitors to scale the plot (graphs) to if applicablesourceallows you to select a different source file in which the default data sources are written down
Next to that, to enable or disable certain functionalities of the terminal you can use the featflags menu which
includes the following:
retryloadwhenever you misspell commands, try to use theloadcommand with it first (default is no).tabwhether to use tabulate to print DataFrames, to prettify these DataFrames (default is yes).clswhether to clear the command window after each command (default is no).colorwhether to use colors within the terminal (default is yes).promptkitwhether you wish to enable autocomplete and history (default is yes).thoughtswhether to receive a thought of the day (default is no).reporthtmlwhether to open reports as HTML instead of Jupyter Notebooks (default is yes).exithelpwhether to automatically print the help message when you useq(default is yes).rcontextwhether to remember loaded tickers and similar while switching menus (default is yes).richwhether to apply a colorful rich terminal (default is yes).richpanelwhether to apply a colorful rich terminal panel (default is yes).ionwhether to enable interactive mode of MATPLOTLIB (default is yes).watermarkwhether to include the watermark of OpenBB Terminal in figures (default is yes).cmdlocwhether the location of the command is displayed in figures (default is yes).tbhintwhether usage hints are displayed in the bottom toolbar (default is yes).
Lastly, you can also change the default sources of each command via the sources menu. For example, if you would
like to change the default data provider from the load command from the stocks menu you can first run the command
get following by stocks_load. This returns the following:
2022 Jul 25, 16:52 (🦋) /sources/ $ get stocks_load
Default : yf
Available : yf, iex, av, polygon
Then, with set you can change the default data provider. For example, we can change the data provider to iex with
the following:
2022 Jul 25, 16:55 (🦋) /sources/ $ set stocks_load iex
The data source was specified successfully.
2022 Jul 25, 16:55 (🦋) /sources/ $ get stocks_load
Default : iex
Available : iex, yf, av, polygon
Obtaining support and/or giving feedback
Being an open source platform that wishes to tailor to the needs of any type of investor, we highly encourage anyone to share with us their experience and/or how we can further improve the OpenBB Terminal. This can be anything from a very small bug to a new feature to the implementation of a highly advanced Machine Learning model.
You are able to directly send us information about a bug or question/suggestion from inside the terminal by using
the support command which is available everywhere in the terminal. Here you can select which command you want to
report a bug, ask a question or make a suggestion on. When you press ENTER (⏎), you are taken to the Support form
which is automatically filled with your input. You are only required to include the type (e.g. bug, suggestion or
question) and message in the form although this can also be set directly from inside the terminal (see support -h).
Alternatively, you can contact us via the following routes:
- If you notice that a feature is missing inside the terminal, please fill in the Request a Feature form.
- If you wish to report a bug, have a question/suggestion or anything else, please fill in the Support form.
- If you wish to speak to us directly, please contact us via Discord.