Inspect available date range of data

Yes, you can check the availability of historical data for a particular symbol by using the History method in QuantConnect. However, there isn't a built-in function to directly query the date range of a symbol's historical data.

Here is an example of how you can use the History method to get historical data for a particular symbol:

qb = QuantBook()
symbol = qb.AddEquity("SPY").Symbol
history = qb.History(symbol, datetime(2008, 1, 1), datetime(2018, 1, 1), Resolution.Daily)

In this example, history will be a pandas DataFrame containing the historical data for the symbol "SPY" from January 1, 2008, to January 1, 2018. If there is no data available for a particular date within this range, it will not be included in the DataFrame.

If you want to find out the earliest date for which data is available, you could potentially request a large date range and then check the first date in the returned DataFrame. However, this could be inefficient if the date range is very large.

Please note that the availability of historical data can vary depending on the asset type and market. For example, QuantConnect provides US equities data from 1998, but futures data might not be available that far back. You can check the data library for more information on what data is available.

Also, keep in mind that some symbols might have limitations due to numerical precision issues in the factor file, which could limit the available data to a certain date range. If this is the case, you will see a warning message in your algorithm logs.

Sources:

• Forum Discussion: Symbol start date
• Forum Discussion: Free historical data limitations
• Forum Discussion: Data for symbol has been limited due to numerical precision issues in the factor file
• QuantConnect Documentation: History Requests