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Excel Guide

Excel STOCKHISTORY Alternative: Intraday Quotes & Options Greeks Without VBA

Replace limited STOCKHISTORY formulas and brittle VBA web scrapers with 17 native =APEXTICK.* worksheet functions for batched quotes, technical indicators, and Black-Scholes options chains.

Microsoft Excel's built-in STOCKHISTORY function and linked Stocks data types are useful for basic end-of-day lookups, but quantitative analysts and options traders quickly hit four hard walls:

  1. No Options Chains or Greeks: STOCKHISTORY cannot pull option strikes, implied volatility, Delta, Gamma, Theta, or Vega.
  2. No Intraday OHLCV Bars: STOCKHISTORY only supports daily, weekly, or monthly intervals (1m, 5m, 15m, and 1h bars are unavailable).
  3. No Technical Indicators or Unusual Options Screening: Computing RSI-14, MACD, ATR-14, or RVOL-20 across a 50-ticker watchlist requires giant helper sheets.
  4. No Live Event-Driven Cell Streaming: Built-in data types require manual refresh (Ctrl+Alt+F5) instead of pushing live trades into cells.

ApexTick Excel Options Chains & Greeks

ApexTick for Excel solves all four limitations with 17 dynamic-array =APEXTICK.* worksheet functions that work in Excel on the Web (excel.office.com), Excel for Mac, and Excel for Windows—with zero VBA macros.

Side-by-Side Comparison: Excel STOCKHISTORY vs. =APEXTICK.*

CapabilityExcel STOCKHISTORY / Stocks Data TypeApexTick for Excel (=APEXTICK.*)
Active intraday quotes & 50ms auto-batchingManual refresh; slow on 50+ rows.=APEXTICK.QUOTE("NVDA", "price") coalesces up to 50 rows into 1 HTTP call within 50ms.
Live event-driven streamingNot supported.=APEXTICK.STREAM("NVDA", "price") pushes live updates straight into cells.
Intraday OHLCV candles (`1m`–`1h`)Daily/weekly/monthly only.=APEXTICK.HISTORY("AAPL", "5m") spills Time · Open · High · Low · Close · Volume.
Options chains & Black-Scholes GreeksNot supported.=APEXTICK.OPTIONS.CHAIN("NVDA", "", "c") spills Strike, Bid, Ask, IV, Delta, Gamma, Theta, Vega.
Unusual options volume & IV screenerNot supported.=APEXTICK.OPTIONS.SCREENER("NVDA", "call", 500, 500, 25).
Server-computed technical indicatorsRequires manual formula columns.=APEXTICK.INDICATOR("SPY", "rsi14"), "macd", "sma200", "rvol20", "atr14".
Company financials, earnings & ETF holdingsLimited summary fields.=APEXTICK.FINANCIALS("AAPL"), =APEXTICK.EARNINGS("NVDA"), =APEXTICK.ETF.HOLDINGS("QQQ").

Common Formula Recipes

1. Build a 50-Symbol Watchlist That Updates in One Batched Request

Place your tickers in A5:A24 (AAPL, MSFT, NVDA, SPY, QQQ, ...) and fill these formulas down columns B through F:

Excel
=APEXTICK.QUOTE(A5, "price")
=APEXTICK.QUOTE(A5, "change_percent")
=APEXTICK.QUOTE(A5, "volume")
=APEXTICK.INDICATOR(A5, "rsi14")
=APEXTICK.INDICATOR(A5, "rvol20")

Because the add-in collects all APEXTICK.QUOTE calls made within a 50ms window, a 50-row watchlist executes as 1 batched API request instead of 50 separate calls.

2. Spill a Full Call or Put Options Chain with Greeks

Pick an empty cell with 12 columns of space to the right and enter:

Excel
=APEXTICK.OPTIONS.CHAIN("NVDA", "", "c")

Excel immediately spills the header row and contract table:

OCC Symbol · Type · Strike · Bid · Ask · Volume · Open Interest · Implied Volatility · Delta · Gamma · Theta · Vega

3. Screen High-Yield Covered Calls & Cash-Secured Puts

To find the 25 most active call contracts on NVDA with at least 100 contract volume and 100 open interest:

Excel
=APEXTICK.OPTIONS.SCREENER("NVDA", "call", 100, 100, 25)

Download 4 Free Ready-to-Use .xlsx Workbooks

Skip building sheets from scratch—download any of these pre-wired workbooks and open them in Excel on the Web, Mac, or Windows:

See the Excel Add-ins Setup Guide for 60-second installation instructions.