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rloopsquantmodstocks

getSymbols downloading data for multiple symbols and calculate returns

I'm currently downloading stock data using GetSymbols from the Quantmod package and calculating the daily stock returns, and then combining the data into a dataframe. I would like to do this for a very large set of stock symbols. See example below. In stead of doing this manually I would like to use a For Loop if possible or maybe use one of the apply functions, however I can not find the solution.

This is what I currently do:

Symbols<-c  ("XOM","MSFT","JNJ","GE","CVX","WFC","PG","JPM","VZ","PFE","T","IBM","MRK","BAC","DIS","ORCL","PM","INTC","SLB")
length(Symbols)

#daily returns for selected stocks & SP500 Index
SP500<-as.xts(dailyReturn(na.omit(getSymbols("^GSPC",from=StartDate,auto.assign=FALSE))))
S1<-as.xts(dailyReturn(na.omit(getSymbols(Symbols[1],from=StartDate,auto.assign=FALSE))))
S2<-as.xts(dailyReturn(na.omit(getSymbols(Symbols[2],from=StartDate,auto.assign=FALSE))))
S3<-as.xts(dailyReturn(na.omit(getSymbols(Symbols[3],from=StartDate,auto.assign=FALSE))))
S4<-as.xts(dailyReturn(na.omit(getSymbols(Symbols[4],from=StartDate,auto.assign=FALSE))))
S5<-as.xts(dailyReturn(na.omit(getSymbols(Symbols[5],from=StartDate,auto.assign=FALSE))))
S6<-as.xts(dailyReturn(na.omit(getSymbols(Symbols[6],from=StartDate,auto.assign=FALSE))))
S7<-as.xts(dailyReturn(na.omit(getSymbols(Symbols[7],from=StartDate,auto.assign=FALSE))))
S8<-as.xts(dailyReturn(na.omit(getSymbols(Symbols[8],from=StartDate,auto.assign=FALSE))))
S9<-as.xts(dailyReturn(na.omit(getSymbols(Symbols[9],from=StartDate,auto.assign=FALSE))))
S10<-as.xts(dailyReturn(na.omit(getSymbols(Symbols[10],from=StartDate,auto.assign=FALSE)))) 
....
S20<-as.xts(dailyReturn(na.omit(getSymbols(Symbols[20],from=StartDate,auto.assign=FALSE)))) 

SPportD<-cbind(SP500,S1,S2,S3,S4,S5,S6,S7,S8,S9,S10,S11,S12,S13,S14,S15,S16,S17,S18,S19,S20)
names(SPportD)[1:(length(Symbols)+1)]<-c("SP500",Symbols)

SPportD.df<-data.frame(index(SPportD),coredata(SPportD),stringsAsFactors=FALSE)
names(SPportD.df)[1:(length(Symbols)+2)]<-c(class(StartDate),"SP500",Symbols)

Any suggestions?

Thanks!

Solution

  • lapply is your friend:

    Stocks = lapply(Symbols, function(sym) {
  dailyReturn(na.omit(getSymbols(sym, from=StartDate, auto.assign=FALSE)))
})

    Then to merge:

    do.call(merge, Stocks)

    Similar application for the other assignments