You didn't follow the posting guide. Your example is not reproducible, and posting HTML that just gets converted to plain text doesn't help.
I assume that you currently have a data.frame as is output by read.csv. Why are you converting it to a matrix? I guess that what you want from your data.frame is most likely something like this: sector_returns <- read.csv("Sector.csv", head=TRUE) sector_returns <- xts(sector_returns[,-1], order.by=as.Date(sector_returns[,1], format="%m/%d/%Y")) see ?xts and ?strftime for more information. Regards, Brian On Wed, 2015-10-21 at 15:05 -0400, Am Gut wrote: > Everyone, > > I would appreciate some help on a very basic topic that I have been > struggling with for quite a while. I am using the xts packages and have > gone through quite a bit of documentation in search of how to create a time > index based on a time column in my dataset. > > I am following the code used directly in the xts package documentation and > would greatly appreciate it if someone would help. The beginning of my > imported dataset looks like: > > row.names Consumer Discretionary Consumer Staples 1/31/1995 0.6468773 > 2.047813 2/28/1995 3.39433 2.866054 3/31/1995 3.0161 2.887118 4/28/1995 > -1.341188 2.826405 5/31/1995 4.459739 4.309547 6/30/1995 2.636647 1.610363 > 7/31/1995 3.298938 -0.002974272 > > I am using the following code: > > require(xts) > sector_returns = read.csv("Sector.csv", head=TRUE) > class(sector_returns) > > sector_returns = as.matrix(sector_returns) > sector_xts = as.xts(sector_returns,dateFormat='Date') > > the last line gives me the following error: > > Error in as.xts.matrix(sector_returns, dateFormat = "Date") : > order.by must be either 'rownames()' or otherwise specified > > I have tried a few different ways of using the rownames function and have > had zero success. I apologize if this question is extremely basic, as I > have made significant effort trying to get this to work. Any help on > assigning the rownames to my date variable (row.names column) would be > extremely helpful. > > Thanks in advance, > > AG > > [[alternative HTML version deleted]] > > _______________________________________________ > R-SIG-Finance@r-project.org mailing list > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-sig-finance > -- Subscriber-posting only. If you want to post, subscribe first. > -- Also note that this is not the r-help list where general R questions > should go. -- Brian G. Peterson http://braverock.com/brian/ Ph: 773-459-4973 IM: bgpbraverock _______________________________________________ R-SIG-Finance@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-sig-finance -- Subscriber-posting only. If you want to post, subscribe first. -- Also note that this is not the r-help list where general R questions should go.