Why is financial data of some public companies not available on Yahoo Finance?
In general, the short answer is to use SEDAR, the Canadian database that compiles financial statements for Canadian companies. The financial statements for Pacific Rubiales Energy Corp can be found here.  The long answer is that the data might be missing because in Canada, each province has their own agency to regulate securities. Yahoo might not compile information from such a wide array of sources. If other countries also have a decentralized system, Yahoo might not take the time to compile financial information from all these sources. There are a myriad of other reasons that could cause this too, however.  This is why SEDAR is useful; it 's the Canadian equivalent of the SEC's EDGAR database, and it maintains a sizeable database of financial statements. http://www.pacificrubiales.com/investor-relations/reports.html does have financial reports on their website for the example you list.  There is the potential for some data to not be easily imported into a format that Yahoo! Finance uses would be my guess for why some data may be missing though an alternative explanation for some companies would be that they may not have been around for a long enough time period to report this information,e.g. if the company is a spin-off of an existing company.
The biggest issue with Yahoo Finance is the recent change to the API in May. The data is good quality, includes both dividend/split adjusted and raw prices, but it's much more difficult to pull the data with packages like R quantmod than before.  Google is fine as well, but there are some missing data points and you can't unadjust the prices (or is it that they're all unadjusted and you can't get adjusted? I can't recall). I use Google at home, when I can't pull from Bloomberg directly and when I'm not too concerned with accuracy.  Quandl seems quite good but I haven't tried them. There's also a newer website called www.alphavantage.co, I haven't tried them yet either but their data seems to be pretty good quality from what I've heard. I assume you're after a price time series and not a list of S&P 500 constituents?  Yahoo Finance is always a reasonable starting point. Code you're after is ^GSPC: https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/%5EGSPC/history?p=^GSPC  There's a download data button on the right side. The short answer is that there are no great personal finance programs out there any more. In the past, I found Microsoft Money to be slick and feature rich but unfortunately it has been discontinued a few years ago.  Your choices now are Quicken and Mint along with the several open-source programs that have been listed by others. In the past, I found the open source programs to be both clunky and not feature-complete for my every day use. It's possible they have improved significantly since I had last looked at them. The biggest limitation I saw with them is weakness of integration with financial service providers (banks, credit card companies, brokerage accounts, etc.) Let's start with Mint. Mint is a web-based tool (owned by the same company as Quicken) whose main feature is its ability to connect to nearly every financial institution you're likely to use. Mint aggregates that data for you and presents it on the homepage. This makes it very easy to see your net worth and changes to it over time, spending trends, track your progress on budgets and long-term goals, etc. Mint allows you to do all of this with little or no data entry. It has support for your investments but does not allow for deep analysis of them. Quicken is a desktop program. It is extremely feature rich in terms of supporting different types of accounts, transactions, reports, reconciliation, etc. One could use Quicken to do everything that I just described about Mint, but the power of Quicken is in its more manual features. For example, while Mint is centred on showing you your status, Quicken allows you to enter transactions in real-time (as you're writing a check, initiating a transfer, etc) and later reconciles them with data from your financial institutions. Link Mint, Quicken has good integration with financial companies so you can generally get away with as little or as much data entry as you want. For example, you can manually enter large checks and transfers (and later match to automatically-downloaded data) but allow small entries like credit card purchases to download automatically.  Bottom line, if you're just looking to keep track of where you are at, try Mint. It's very simple and free. If you need more power and want to manage your finances on a more transactional level, try Quicken (though I believe they do not have a trial version, I don't understand why). The learning curve is steep although probably gentler than that of GnuCash. Last note on why Mint.com is free: it's the usual ad-supported model, plus Mint sells aggregated consumer behaviour reports to other institutions (since Mint has everyone's transactions, it can identify consumer trends). If you're not comfortable with that, or with the idea of giving a website passwords to all your financial accounts, you will find Quicken easier to accept. Hope this helps. Wikipedia has a nice definition of financial literacy (emphasis below is mine): [...] refers to an   individual's ability to make informed   judgments and effective decisions   about the use and management of their   money. Raising interest in personal   finance is now a focus of state-run   programs in countries including   Australia, Japan, the United States   and the UK. [...]  As for how you can become financially literate, here are some suggestions: Learn about how basic financial products works: bank accounts, mortgages, credit cards, investment accounts, insurance (home, car, life, disability, medical.) Free printed & online materials should be available from your existing financial service providers to help you with your existing products.  In particular, learn about the fees, interest, or other charges you may incur with these products.  Becoming fee-aware is a step towards financial literacy, since financially literate people compare costs.  Seek out additional information on each type of product from unbiased sources (i.e. sources not trying to sell you something.) Get out of debt and stay out of debt. This may take a while. Focus on your highest-interest loans first. Learn the difference between good debt and bad debt.   Learn about compound interest.  Once you understand compound interest, you'll understand why being in debt is bad for your financial well-being. If you aren't already saving money for retirement, start now.  Investigate whether your employer offers an advantageous matched 401(k) plan (or group RRSP/DC plan for Canadians) or a pension plan.  If your employer offers a good plan, sign up.  If you get to choose your own investments, keep it simple and favor low-cost balanced index funds until you understand the different types of investments.  Read the material provided by the plan sponsor, try online tools provided, and seek out additional information from unbiased sources. If your employer doesn't offer an advantageous retirement plan, open an individual retirement account or IRA (or personal RRSP for Canadians.)  If your employer does offer a plan, you can set one of these up to save even more.  You could start with access to a family of low-cost mutual funds (examples: Vanguard for Americans, or TD eFunds for Canadians) or earn advanced credit by learning about discount brokers and self-directed accounts. Understand how income taxes and other taxes work.  If you have an accountant prepare your taxes, ask questions.  If you prepare your taxes yourself, understand what you're doing and don't file blind.  Seek help if necessary.  There are many good books on how income tax works.  Software packages that help you self-file often have online help worth reading – read it. Learn about life insurance, medical insurance, disability insurance, wills, living wills & powers of attorney, and estate planning.  Death and illness can derail your family's finances.  Learn how these things can help. Seek out and read key books on personal finance topics.  e.g. Your Money Or Your Life, Why Smart People Make Big Money Mistakes, The Four Pillars of Investing, The Random Walk Guide to Investing, and many more. Seek out and read good personal finance blogs.  There's a wealth of information available for free on the Internet, but do check facts and assumptions. Here are some suggested blogs for American readers and some suggested blogs for Canadian readers. Subscribe to a personal finance periodical and read it.  Good ones to start with are Kiplinger's Personal Finance Magazine in the U.S. and MoneySense Magazine in Canada.  The business section in your local newspaper may sometimes have personal finance articles worth reading, too. Shameless plug: Ask more questions on this site. The Personal Finance & Money Stack Exchange is here to help you learn about money & finance, so you can make better financial decisions.  We're all here to learn and help others learn about money. Keep learning! "Shares sold to private investors are sold using private contracts and do not adhere to the same level of strict regulations as publicly traded shares. You may have different classes of shares in the company with different strings attached to them, depending on the deals made with the investors at the time. Since public cannot negotiate, the IPO prospectus is in fact the investment contract between the company and the public, and the requirements to what the company can put there are much stricter than private sales. Bob may not be able to sell his ""special"" stocks on the public exchange, as the IPO specifies which class of stock is being listed for trading, and Bob's is not the same class. He can sell it on the OTC market, which is less regulated, and then the buyer has to do his due diligence. Yes, OTC-sold stocks may have strings attached to them (for example a buy back option at a preset time and price)." Makes perfect sense in two ways. Staying private allows companies to focus on long term strategy rather than quarterly results, and some of the companies mentioned raised lots of money very quickly but might not have the most stable strategy over the long term which would turn off public investors. "This information is clearly ""material"" (large impact) and ""non-public"" according to the statement of the problem.  Also, decisions like United States v. Carpenter make it clear that you do not need to be a member of the company to do illegal insider trading on its stock. Importantly though, stackexchange is not a place for legal advice and this answer should not be construed as such.  Legal/compliance at Company A would be a good place to start asking questions." Check out WorldCap.org. They provide fundamental data for Hong Kong stocks in combination with an iPad app. Disclosure: I am affiliated with WorldCap.