[R-SIG-Finance] RMetrics fBasics market data retrieval andtimeSeries functionality still being maintained at all?

Martin Maechler maechler at stat.math.ethz.ch
Wed Aug 15 15:42:39 CEST 2007


>>>>> "DL" == David-Michael Lincke <dlincke at lincke.net>
>>>>>     on Tue, 14 Aug 2007 13:49:31 -0400 writes:

    DL> Thanks everybody for pointing this out. I did not expect updates to the
    DL> packages to be dependent on the very latest release of R being installed
    DL> given that my installation is still less then a year old.

They do depend only as long as you use Windoze and install
precompiled aka "binary" R packages.
Precompiled R packages are typically only available for the
latest version of R.

If you'd either use a real operating system or install all the
necessary tools on windows (beware!! that's not at all easy, and
many people have given up trying to do that) such that you can
install *source* (as opposed to "binary") R packages on windows,
you would not see such problems.

Regards,
Martin


    DL> -----Original Message-----
    DL> From: Dirk Eddelbuettel [mailto:edd at debian.org] 
    DL> Sent: Tuesday, August 14, 2007 1:31 PM
    DL> To: David-Michael Lincke
    DL> Cc: 'Martin Maechler'; r-sig-finance at stat.math.ethz.ch
    DL> Subject: Re: [R-SIG-Finance] RMetrics fBasics market data retrieval
    DL> andtimeSeries functionality still being maintained at all?


    DL> On 14 August 2007 at 12:22, David-Michael Lincke wrote:
    DL> | Martin,
    DL> | 
    DL> | I did run update.packages() after I first encountered problems, which
    DL> | suggested that no newer version was available. The source code of
    DL> | yahooImport() clearly scans for dates with format along the lines of
    DL> | 2007-Aug-01 while Yahoo actually delivers 2007-08-01. Here is the output
    DL> | from sessionInfo():
    DL> | 
    DL> | > sessionInfo()
    DL> | R version 2.4.0 (2006-10-03) 
    DL> | i386-pc-mingw32 

    DL> Released last October, as the date shows. You missed a patch release (always
    DL> recommended), a new major release (2.5.) and its first patch releases.

    DL> | locale:
    DL> | LC_COLLATE=English_United States.1252;LC_CTYPE=English_United
    DL> | States.1252;LC_MONETARY=English_United
    DL> | States.1252;LC_NUMERIC=C;LC_TIME=English_United States.1252
    DL> | 
    DL> | attached base packages:
    DL> | [1] "methods"   "stats"     "graphics"  "grDevices" "utils"     "datasets"

    DL> | [7] "base"     
    DL> | 
    DL> | other attached packages:
    DL> |       fBasics     fCalendar       fEcofin          MASS 
    DL> | "240.10068.1"   "240.10068"   "240.10067"      "7.2-34"

    DL> These are __current only conditional of the version of R you're running__
    DL> i.e. R found you the max(version | R release).  The problem is that you use
    DL> an outdated R releases, which leads to the outdated Rmetrics.

    DL> Please upgrade, and your problem should go away as suggested by three
    DL> different readers of this list.

    DL> Hth, Dirk

 
    DL> | David
    DL> | 
    DL> | -----Original Message-----
    DL> | From: Martin Maechler [mailto:maechler at stat.math.ethz.ch] 
    DL> | Sent: Tuesday, August 14, 2007 12:03 PM
    DL> | To: David-Michael Lincke
    DL> | Cc: 'Diethelm Wuertz'; r-sig-finance at stat.math.ethz.ch
    DL> | Subject: Re: [R-SIG-Finance] RMetrics fBasics market data retrieval and
    DL> | timeSeries functionality still being maintained at all?
    DL> | 
    DL> | 
    DL> | >>>>> "DL" == David-Michael Lincke <dlincke at lincke.net>
    DL> | >>>>>     on Sun, 12 Aug 2007 21:11:39 -0400 writes:
    DL> | 
    DL> |     DL> Diethelm,
    DL> |     DL> Thank you for your response. Asyt.ts in my example is a timeSeries
    DL> | object
    DL> |     DL> constructed using yahooSeries(). Trying out the example you
    DL> provided
    DL> | I get:
    DL> | 
    DL> |     >> IBM = yahooSeries("IBM")
    DL> |     DL> trying URL
    DL> |     DL>
    DL> |
    DL> 'http://chart.yahoo.com/table.csv?s=IBM&a=7&b=12&c=2006&d=7&e=12&f=2007&g=d&
    DL> |     DL> x=.csv'
    DL> |     DL> Content type 'text/csv' length unknown
    DL> |     DL> opened URL
    DL> |     DL> downloaded 12Kb
    DL> | 
    DL> |     DL> Read 250 items
    DL> |     DL> Error in matrix(unlist(x2), byrow = TRUE, nrow = length(x2)) : 
    DL> |     DL> matrix: invalid 'ncol' value (< 0)
    DL> |     DL> Error in .yahooSeries(symbols[1], from = from, to = to, nDaysBack
    DL> =
    DL> |     DL> nDaysBack,  : 
    DL> |     DL> cannot get a slot ("data") from an object of type "character"
    DL> | 
    DL> | David,
    DL> | I can confirm Diethelm's statement that  yahooSeries()
    DL> | works without problems 
    DL> | 
    DL> | __IFF__ you use current versions of R and fBasics.
    DL> | 
    DL> | Can you give your
    DL> |     sessionInfo() ## {after having loaded  fBasics} ?
    DL> | 
    DL> | I'm pretty sure your version of fBasics is not current enough.
    DL> | 
    DL> |     DL> After applying the patch to yahooImport() that I posted in my
    DL> | initial
    DL> |     DL> message the import works:
    DL> | 
    DL> |     >> IBM = yahooSeries("IBM")
    DL> |     DL> trying URL
    DL> |     DL>
    DL> |
    DL> 'http://chart.yahoo.com/table.csv?s=IBM&a=7&b=12&c=2006&d=7&e=12&f=2007&g=d&
    DL> |     DL> x=.csv'
    DL> |     DL> Content type 'text/csv' length unknown
    DL> |     DL> opened URL
    DL> |     DL> downloaded 12Kb
    DL> | 
    DL> |     DL> Read 250 items
    DL> |     DL> Read 7 items
    DL> | 
    DL> |     >> colnames(IBM)
    DL> |     DL> [1] "IBM.Open"   "IBM.High"   "IBM.Low"    "IBM.Close"
    DL> "IBM.Volume"
    DL> | 
    DL> |     DL> Given that plot() has been overloaded to deal with timeSeries
    DL> | objects I
    DL> |     DL> would have expected it to have some default functionality when
    DL> | passed a
    DL> |     DL> timeSeries object short of unceremoniously failing in a lower
    DL> level
    DL> | function
    DL> |     DL> call. I did not realize it only works on single columns/data
    DL> series.
    DL> | 
    DL> |     DL> As for ohlcDailyPlot(), I checked the source code later on and
    DL> | realized that
    DL> |     DL> it expects column names that are different from how the market
    DL> data
    DL> |     DL> retrieval functions construct their timeSeries objects. This is
    DL> | easily
    DL> |     DL> adjusted for. However, it's not exactly a smooth solution from a
    DL> | design
    DL> |     DL> point of view. Also, the documentation does not mention the need
    DL> for
    DL> | an
    DL> |     DL> explicit prior call to par(mfrow = c(2, 1)) for it to result in a
    DL> | proper
    DL> |     DL> plot. But I guess maybe that's obvious to a more seasoned R user
    DL> | than me.
    DL> | 
    DL> |     DL> Anyway, thank you for pointing me in the right direction. The code
    DL> | in
    DL> |     DL> yahooImport(), however, really is broken as you can clearly verify
    DL> | by taking
    DL> |     DL> a look at the date format delivered by Yahoo which does not have
    DL> | spelled out
    DL> |     DL> three letter month names as expected by the source code.
    DL> | 
    DL> | 
    DL> | I partly agree with you, that the documentation of several of
    DL> | the Rmetrics functions is clearly "sub-optimal".
    DL> | There's currently an ongoing effort to make Rmetrics being
    DL> | loaded on more shoulders than just Diethelm's and I'd hope that
    DL> | consequently many things will improve on the documentation front
    DL> | ...
    DL> | 
    DL> | Best regards,
    DL> | Martin
    DL> | 
    DL> |     DL> David
    DL> | 
    DL> | _______________________________________________
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