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 will require a connection to Yahoo Finance, which will be the data source.

1. Determine the start date by subtracting 1 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 so-called locators. These objects from the matplotlib.dates package are needed to 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 will create a string containing the short name of a month and the year.

   month_formatter = DateFormatter(...