Time for action – plotting a year's worth of stock quotes

We can plot a year's worth of stock quotes data with the matplotlib.finance package. This requires a connection to Yahoo Finance, which is the data source.

1. Determine the start date by subtracting one year from today:

   from matplotlib.dates import DateFormatter
   from matplotlib.dates import DayLocator
   from matplotlib.dates import MonthLocator
   from matplotlib.finance import quotes_historical_yahoo
   from matplotlib.finance import candlestick
   import sys
   from datetime import date
   import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
   today = date.today()
   start = (today.year - 1, today.month, today.day)

2. We need to create the so-called locators. These objects from the matplotlib.dates package locate months and days on the x axis:

   alldays = DayLocator()
   months = MonthLocator()

3. Create a date formatter to format the dates on the x axis. This formatter creates a string containing the short name of a month and the year:

   month_formatter = DateFormatter(&quot...