Question

Here is the code generating a plot of an xts object:

require("quantmod")
getSymbols("SPY")
plot(Cl(SPY))

Which yields the following plot:

Can you remove the y-axis values (the prices) from a plot of an xts object?

Hint: passing yaxt='n' doesn’t work.

Answer 1

Removing the y-axis is easy, but it also removes the x-axis. A couple options:

1) Easy — use plot.zoo:

plot.zoo(Cl(SPY), yaxt="n", ylab="")

2) Harder-ish — take pieces from plot.xts:

plot(Cl(SPY), axes=FALSE)
axis(1, at=xy.coords(.index(SPY), SPY[, 1])$x[axTicksByTime(SPY)],
  label=names(axTicksByTime(SPY)), mgp = c(3, 2, 0))

3) Customize-ish — modify plot.xts so axes= accepts a vector of axes to plot and/or TRUE/FALSE.