Python for Finance Cookbook - Second Edition

3

Visualizing Financial Time Series

The old adage a picture is worth a thousand words is very much applicable in the data science field. We can use different kinds of plots to not only explore data but also tell data-based stories.

While working with financial time series data, quickly plotting the series can already lead to many valuable insights, such as:

• Is the series continuous?
• Are there any unexpected missing values?
• Do some values look like outliers?
• Are there any patterns we can quickly see and use for further analyses?

Naturally, these are only some of the potential questions that aim to help us with our analyses. The main goal of visualization at the very beginning of any project is to familiarize yourself with the data and get ...