S&P 500 daily returns in 2018

Data

This plot uses the sp500 data frame of the gcubed package.

library(gcubed)
tail(sp500)

## # A tibble: 6 x 12
##   Month   Day  Year  Open  High   Low Close `Adj Close` Volume PrevClose
##   <int> <int> <int> <dbl> <dbl> <dbl> <dbl>       <dbl>  <dbl>     <dbl>
## 1    12    21  2018 2465. 2504. 2409. 2417.       2417. 7.61e9     2467.
## 2    12    24  2018 2401. 2410. 2351. 2351.       2351. 2.61e9     2417.
## 3    12    26  2018 2363. 2468. 2347. 2468.       2468. 4.23e9     2351.
## 4    12    27  2018 2442. 2489. 2398. 2489.       2489. 4.10e9     2468.
## 5    12    28  2018 2499. 2520. 2473. 2486.       2486. 3.70e9     2489.
## 6    12    31  2018 2499. 2509. 2483. 2507.       2507. 3.44e9     2486.
## # … with 2 more variables: daily_return <dbl>, abs_ret <dbl>

First, we will restrict the data to only those entries from the year 2018. Then we will create a new column, updown that will simply say whether or not each day’s return represented a gain or a loss. This will be used later to colour the bars of the plot.

Code for plot

We will use the geom_bar geometry to create this plot. The fill aesthetic_ will be used to colour the bars appropriately for positive and negative daily returns.

library(ggplot2)

sp18_plt <- ggplot(data = sp18, aes(x = Date, y = daily_return, fill = updown )) +
  geom_bar(stat = "identity") +
  ylab("Daily Returns (% of Prev Close)")+
  guides(fill = guide_legend(override.aes= list(alpha = 0.2))) +
  ggtitle("S&P 500 Daily Returns (2018) ") +
  theme(plot.title = element_text(size = 16, face = "bold", hjust = 0.5), 
        panel.background = element_blank(),
        axis.title.x=element_blank(),
        legend.position = "none") + 
  scale_fill_manual(values = c("blue", "red"))

sp18_plt