An Introduction to Analysis of Financial Data with R

The importance of quantitative methods in business and finance has increased substantially in recent years because we are in a data-rich environment and the economies and financial markets are more integrated than ever before. Data are collected systematically for thousands of variables in many countries and at a finer timescale. Computing facilities and statistical packages for analyzing complicated and high dimensional financial data are now widely available. As a matter of fact, with an internet connection, one can easily download financial data from open sources within a software package such as R. All of these good features and capabilities are free and widely accessible.

The objective of this book is to provide basic knowledge of financial time series, introduce statistical tools useful for analyzing financial data, and gain experience in financial applications of various econometric methods. We begin with the basic concepts of financial data to be analyzed throughout the book. The software R is introduced via examples. We also discuss different ways to visualize financial data in R. Chapter 2 reviews basic concepts of linear time series analysis such as stationarity and autocorrelation function, introduces simple linear models for handling serial dependence of the data, and discusses regression models with time series errors, seasonality, unit-root nonstationarity, and long-memory ...