Downloading Stock Market Data via Yahoo using Python

"""

In my spare time, I'm an investor. I figure I should
should use my powers in math and computer science and
help build for myself a better future.

This program will download the past year's stock
history for a list of ticker symbols defined by the
'symbols' list variable. Each stock's data will be
downloaded to your computer into a CSV file, which
can easily be viewed with Microsoft Excel.

Tomorrow's post will be a program on how to read the
output files using the popular statistical computing
software R.

"""

import urllib
from datetime import date

symbols = [ "BAC", "YHOO", "RIMM", "MU", "MSFT", "GOOG", "PFE", "INTC", "C", "GE", "SAP", "YUM", "CLRT", "ORCL", "AMZN", "XTXI", "GS", "KO", "F", "PG", "EMR", "AAPL", "KFT", "NFLX", "CPNO", "BIG", "FTR"]

def download(url, outfile):
    webFile = urllib.urlopen(url)
    localFile = open(outfile, 'w')
    localFile.write(webFile.read())
    webFile.close()
    localFile.close()

def get1YearPriceHistory(symbol):
    today = date.today()
    url = "http://ichart.finance.yahoo.com/table.csv?s=%s&a=%02d&b=%02d&c=%04d&d=%02d&e=%02d&f=%04d&g=d&ignore=.csv" % \
           (symbol, today.month - 1, today.day, today.year - 1, today.month - 1, today.day, today.year)
    outfile = symbol + ".csv"
    download(url, outfile)

if __name__ == '__main__':
    for s in symbols:
        get1YearPriceHistory(s)