[R] selecting colors to be used in a plot

[Bos, Roger]

My specific question relates to function charts.PerformanceSummary in package PerformanceAnalytics, but the underlying problem is probably with base plot.

In this sample code we see a chart with 10 groupings.  Apparently 10 groupings is bigger than the number of default colors (8), so red and black are recycled, but in my case groups 1 and 2 are the worst and groups 9 and 10 are the best, so if the same red and black colors are used for both it gets confusing:

Minimal working example with recycled colors:

dates <- as.Date(c('1970-01-02','1970-01-03','1970-01-04','1970-01-05','1970-01-06','1970-01-07','1970-01-08','1970-01-09','1970-01-10','1970-01-11'), format="%Y-%m-%d")
x <- as.xts(matrix(runif(100),10,10), order.by=dates)
names(x) <- paste("Group", 1:10)
charts.PerformanceSummary(x, geometric=FALSE, ylog=TRUE, main='Log Return by Column')

Since the documentation says you can pass other variables to plot, I try to use “col” to set my own colors:

colors <- c("#A6CEE3","#1F78B4","#B2DF8A","#33A02C","#FB9A99","#E31A1C","#FDBF6F","#FF7F00","#CAB2D6","#6A3D9A")
charts.PerformanceSummary(x, geometric=FALSE, ylog=TRUE, col = colors, main='Log Return by Column')

Error in plot.xy(xy.coords(x, y), type = type, ...) :
  formal argument "col" matched by multiple actual arguments

I am sure it is possible to produce a plot using more than 8 colors.  Would someone please point out what I am doing wrong?  Thanks in advance.



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