If you are trying to reproduce a sector breakdown you have seen elsewhere, start here: Massive has no GICS sector or industry field. What ticker details returns is the SIC code the company itself reports on its SEC filings, which is a different taxonomy with different groupings, so Apple lands in a computer-hardware code rather than in a technology sector.
Applies to
- Plans: reference data is included with every plan, including the free Basic tier.
- Endpoints: /v3/reference/tickers/{ticker} and /v3/reference/tickers.
- Asset classes: US stocks.
How to read it
curl -X GET "https://api.massive.com/v3/reference/tickers/AAPL?apiKey=YOUR_API_KEY"
Response
{
"results": {
"ticker": "AAPL",
"name": "Apple Inc.",
"sic_code": "3571",
"sic_description": "ELECTRONIC COMPUTERS",
"total_employees": 166000,
"homepage_url": "https://www.apple.com"
},
"status": "OK"
}
SIC codes are hierarchical: the first two digits are the major group, so 35 is industrial and commercial machinery and 3571 is electronic computers within it. Truncating to two digits is the usual way to get something sector-shaped out of them.
What SIC is and is not good for
SIC is good for knowing what a company files under, and less good as an analytical scheme. It is old, maintained by the SEC for filing purposes rather than for investment analysis, and it shows. Its categories predate most of the technology industry, so companies with quite different businesses share codes and some large modern companies sit in categories that read oddly. It is reliable for what it is: the classification the company files under.
If you need GICS or a similar modern scheme, that is a licensed product from its owner and you would join it to Massive's data on the ticker or the CIK.
Why SIC rather than something better
SIC is used because it comes with the filings. It requires no separate license, it is available for every filer, and it is the company's own answer rather than a third party's judgment. Buying and redistributing a modern classification is a licensing question rather than a technical one, which is why the field you get is the one the SEC already publishes.
If you see an error
A null sic_code happens on ETFs, funds and instruments that do not file, where the concept does not apply.
A code that seems wrong for the company is usually what they actually filed. Check the filing before treating it as a data error.
An industry breakdown that does not match another vendor's is expected if they use GICS. The two schemes do not map cleanly onto each other.
