Introduction to Investments

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The Investments product allows you to obtain holding, security, and transactions data for investment-type accounts in financial institutions within the United States and Canada. This data can be used for personal financial management tools and wealth management analysis.

The /investments/holdings/get endpoint provides both security data and holding data. Security data represents information about a specific security, such as its name, ticker symbol, and price. Security data is not specific to a user's account; any user who held the same security at the same financial institution at the same time would have identical security data.

1{
2  "close_price": 10.42,
3  "close_price_as_of": null,
4  "cusip": "258620103",
5  "institution_id": null,
6  "institution_security_id": null,
7  "is_cash_equivalent": false,
8  "isin": "US2586201038",
9  "iso_currency_code": "USD",
10  "name": "DoubleLine Total Return Bond Fund",
11  "proxy_security_id": null,
12  "security_id": "NDVQrXQoqzt5v3bAe8qRt4A7mK7wvZCLEBBJk",
13  "sedol": null,
14  "ticker_symbol": "DBLTX",
15  "type": "mutual fund",
16  "unofficial_currency_code": null
17}

Holding data, by contrast, represents information about a user's specific ownership of that security, such as the number of shares owned and the cost basis. Each holding includes a security_id field that can be cross-referenced to a security for more detailed information about the security itself.

1{
2  "account_id": "k67E4xKvMlhmleEa4pg9hlwGGNnnEeixPolGm",
3  "cost_basis": 10,
4  "institution_price": 10.42,
5  "institution_price_as_of": null,
6  "institution_value": 20.84,
7  "iso_currency_code": "USD",
8  "quantity": 2,
9  "security_id": "NDVQrXQoqzt5v3bAe8qRt4A7mK7wvZCLEBBJk",
10  "unofficial_currency_code": null
11}

The /investments/transactions/get endpoint provides up to 24 months of investment transactions data. The schema for investment transactions is not the same as for transactions data returned by the Transactions product, instead providing securities-specific information. Inflow, such as stock sales, is shown as a negative amount, and outflow, such as stock purchases, is positive. The /investments/transactions/get endpoint can only be used for investment-type accounts; for obtaining transaction history for other account types, use Transactions.

1{
2  "account_id": "rz99ex9ZQotvnjXdgQLEsR81e3ArPgulVWjGj",
3  "amount": -8.72,
4  "cancel_transaction_id": null,
5  "date": "2020-05-29",
6  "fees": 0,
7  "investment_transaction_id": "oq99Pz97joHQem4BNjXECev1E4B6L6sRzwANW",
8  "iso_currency_code": "USD",
9  "name": "INCOME DIV DIVIDEND RECEIVED",
10  "price": 0,
11  "quantity": 0,
12  "security_id": "eW4jmnjd6AtjxXVrjmj6SX1dNEdZp3Cy8RnRQ",
13  "subtype": "dividend",
14  "type": "cash",
15  "unofficial_currency_code": null
16}

Investments data is not static, since users' holdings will change as they trade and as market prices fluctuate. Plaid typically checks for updates to investment data overnight, after market hours. There are two webhooks that are used for informing you of changes to investment data. The DEFAULT_UPDATE webhook of type HOLDINGS fires when new holdings have been detected or the quantity or price of an existing holding has changed. The DEFAULT_UPDATE webhook of type INVESTMENTS_TRANSACTIONS fires when a new or canceled investment transaction has been detected.

By default, if investments transactions data is not ready when /investments/transactions/get is first called, Plaid will wait for the data. For this reason, calling /investments/transactions/get immediately after Link may take up to one to two minutes to return.

If you are adding Investments to an Item by calling /investments/transactions/get after the Item was originally linked, instead of specifying the Investments product while calling /link/token/create, you can optionally request asynchronous behavior by specifying async_update=true. In this case, Investments will fire a HISTORICAL_UPDATE webhook when data is ready to be fetched.

Investments can be tested in Sandbox or Development without any additional permissions.

To get started building with Investments, see Add Investments to your App.

If you're ready to launch to Production, see the Launch checklist.