Delayed quote

A delayed quote is a price snapshot served minutes behind the exchange tape under exchange agreements, as opposed to a real-time tick. On Yahoo Finance the label is visible rather than buried: the cataloged VNQ and individual diversified REIT ticker pages display 'The market data on this page is currently delayed', and the health care REIT quote pages mark prices 'NYSE - Delayed Quote'.

The trap for buyers is that the same records carry update_frequency: realtime and a granularity of 'Per-ticker, per-day (intraday quote fields refresh during the session)'.

So 'realtime' in a catalog row means the page refreshes during the session; it does not mean you are seeing the exchange print.

Paying real-time prices for a delayed feed is the specific loss this term exists to prevent:

• The label and the license disagree on purpose. Yahoo's terms state 'Data is delayed per exchange agreements' while the page still refreshes intraday.

• Backtests inherit the lag silently. The cataloged health care REIT record spans roughly 15-25 listed tickers; entry prices taken from the delayed field rather than daily OHLCV are minutes old, making intraday calibration fictional.

• Redistribution is a separate problem from delay. The cataloged records are free for personal, non-commercial use with automated scraping not licensed - so even a correctly delayed price cannot legally power a product without a licensing agreement.

Verify the lag before you build on the feed:

1. Read the page's own banner. 'The market data on this page is currently delayed' on the VNQ and diversified REIT pages is the source describing itself; a vendor who cannot produce equivalent wording is hiding the delay.

1. Compare update_frequency against terms_notes. The cataloged health care REIT record pairs realtime with 'Quotes are delayed and marked NYSE - Delayed Quote'; when a source shows that pairing, the terms note wins.

1. Check which fields refresh. Granularity is 'Per-ticker, per-day (intraday quote fields refresh during the session)'; confirm whether the OHLCV history refreshes too.

These entries cover the price records and access patterns that surround a delayed quote:

Daily OHLCV history is the companion record on every Yahoo Finance REIT quote page: open, high, low, close and volume bars per ticker on the Historical Data tab, exportable as CSV - and it is unaffected by quote delay, which is why daily backtests should read it rather than the intraday field.