Graphics Artifacts from Quarterly Commentary

July 2, 2012

(This article was first published on Timely Portfolio, and kindly contributed to R-bloggers)

For my Q2 2012 commentary, I tried multiple graphs to illustrate the disconnect of the US stock markets with the rest of the world. I think I finally settled on this simple Excel bar graph populated by Bloomberg data, but I thought some might like to see some of the R graphical artifacts as I explored how best to illustrate my point.

From TimelyPortfolio

Although I settled on a 1 year performance chart, I really wanted to show more history, but without all the noise of a daily, weekly, or even monthly chart. I tried a chart connecting the 200 day max/min points, but it still seemed noisy and difficult to follow. One big letdown was Yahoo! Finance not providing DJUBS, E1DOW, or P1DOW any more.

From TimelyPortfolio

I then thought connecting the end of year points might offer a nice simplification, and I probably liked this best of the R charts. This shows enough of the path to see the universal move up to 2010, and then the disconnect.

From TimelyPortfolio

Even one R base graphics chart. Thanks again Josh for the fork.

From TimelyPortfolio

As one other option, I thought I would try to just connect beginning, middle, and end since December 2008. This certainly shows the huge disconnect between the U.S. and the rest of the world, but I found it difficult to describe the methodology within the chart.