Reference date or period

The period parameter expects either a period or a reference date, in one of the formats described in the tables below.

Use of reference date parameter

The reference date specifies a specific date. It is used for items that vary over time such as close price, market capitalization, earning per share. This parameter is used only on historicized items. Some data points are available only on a monthly or weekly format, the data item returned corresponds to the next following points.

There are three classes of items depending on entry format as described on the following table:

Item class	Reference Date	Period
Class 1 (example: Company Name)	Not allowed	Not allowed
Class 2 (example: Close Price)	Required	Not allowed
Class 3 (example: Sales)	Optional	Required

Reference date settings

Keyword	Description
`yyyyMMdd`	A date between 1/1/1900 and 31/12/2999 in a valid ISO date format. All date formats recognized by Excel as a date are also valid input. Example 31/12/2017, 20180115
`CWS`	Current Week Start (Monday). Can be used to refer to a relative date.
`CMS`	Current Month Start. Can be used to refer to a relative date.
`CYS`	Current Year Start. Can be used to refer to a relative date.
`TODAY`	Refers to today's date. Can be used to refer to a relative date.
`YESTERDAY`	Refers to yesterday's date. Can be used to a relative date.
#FPED(YYYY)	Refers to the fiscal period end date. Example #FPED(2017) = Fiscal period end date for 2017

Keywords to refer to a relative date

You can refer to a relative date by adding or subtracting a number of weeks, months or years to the keywords below:

LASTY
CY
CWS
CMS
CYS
TODAY
YESTERDAY

Example

LASTY-2

CY+1

CWS-2D

TODAY-1W

With CWS, CMS and CYS you can only subtract (and not add) a number of weeks, months or years as these keywords refer to historical estimates.

Use of period parameter

Keyword	Description
`YYYY`	The expected year as an integer between 1900 and 2999. Example: 2018.
`LASTY`	Last available company year (historical). Can be used to refer to a relative date.
`LTM`	Last Twelve Months (historical). Use the company interim report to provide fresh yearly data.
`NTM`	Next Twelve Months (forecast). Calendarized value on the next twelve month using FY0, FY1, FY2 value. The interest of NTM is to provide a continuous indicator and avoid a yearly discontinuity you have when using FY0 and FY1.
`CY`	Current Year (current calendar year if the current date is after 3^rd of July, and the previous calendar year otherwise). Can be used to refer to a relative date.
`LASTINT`	Last available company interim (historical + interim).
`FY-1`	Previous Forecast year (equivalent to CY-1 and DatasetType is forecast).
`FY0`	Forecast year 0 (equivalent to CY and DatasetType is forecast).
`FY1`	Forecast year 1 (equivalent to CY+1 and DatasetType is forecast).
`FY2`	Forecast year 2 (equivalent to CY+2 and DatasetType is forecast).
`FY3`	Forecast year 3 (equivalent to CY+3 and DatasetType is forecast).

For more information, see the Period Picker option. You can also watch a quick video about the use of period or reference date.