When you need a list of companies or stocks in a particular industry, and your startpoint is Datastream, then what are your options?

1. Via the internet version of Datastream Navigator.

  • In the Explore option you can choose Equities > a country  and then you get a list by industry. This list is based on the sector level of the ICB classification.

2. Via Find Series in the Datastream Excel Add-in.

  • The Explore option there has the same as in the internet version of Datastream Navigator.
  • In the Criteria Search option you can choose Equities. One of the search criteria is Sector – also based on the ICB classification. The advantage is that you can combine this with other search criteria – you are not limited to one particular country as in the Explore option.

When you already have a list of company codes compatible with Datastream (DS Codes, DS Mnemonics, ISINs, SEDOLs) than you can request other industry codes in a Static Request.

  • SIC – the source of this item is Worldscope. Worldscope gives up to 8 SIC codes per company, so in Datastream you can select SIC Code 1, SIC code 2 etc. In your output you will only see the SIC code, not a description.
  • ICB – you can request the industry, supersector, sector and subsector levels from the ICB classification – both the code and the name/description. In the list of datatypes select the codes that start with ICB, the ones that start with FTSL are not available to us.