[R-sig-finance] newbie

[Jan-Paul Roodbol]

Hi

I'm currently doing research into Industry Groupings
on Stock Exchanges.  Is R useful (and easy to use for
a non-programmer)?  

I have data of hundreds of shares, 5.5 years, monthly,
for 60 variables.  I want to investigate if the
industry groupings are indeed homogeneous
intra-groups, and heterogeneous between groups.  I
want to check this with some groupings before and
after reallocation of individual shares or regrouping
because of the International Classification Board
industry grouping roll-out.  I think I would compare
means and SDs.  Groupings are fairly small, most less
than 10 shares in each group.  

I have just started thinking about all of this - hope
it makes some sense at this stage?   

Is R the right tool for me?

Thank you in advance
jpr