How to insert sequential dates in the x axis of a plot

Hi all, I am pretty new to Matlab so excuse me the silly question.

I have plotted the following graph:

plot(weightsP1)
xlabel('Monthly Dates')
ylabel('Optimal Weights')
legend('y =1-Month T-Bill Weight','y =S&P 500 Weight')

Now I do not want the x axis to display numbers ranging from 0 to 160 (since weightsP1 is a 160x2 matrix) but I would like to have the dates in the Month Year format.

My x axis should go from Jan 2003 to Apr 2016, but I just want few of the 160 dates to be displayed on the actual x axis.

I would finally like to have my y axix ranging from -3 and 3.

Is there anyone able to help me out with this? I would really appreciate your help.

Thanks in advance,

Federico

Answer 1

[KSSV]

doc datetick

https://in.mathworks.com/help/matlab/ref/datetick.html

[Federico Rendina]

Hi, thanks for your reply.

I already looked at the link you sent me before making my question but I couldn't understand how to use the instructions to tailor them to my issue.

If i add to my code doc datetick as you suggested nothing seems to change.

Could you please be more specific?

Answer 2

[Peter Perkins]

If you're using a recent version of MATLAB, create your dates as datetimes, not datenums, and just call plot. You get the dates along the axis "for free", and you can specify their format. You'll have to make weightsP1 into a table (or for R2016b or later, a timetable), but I think you'll be happier in the long run. Something like

weightsP1 = array2table(weightsP1,'VariableNames',{'Date','X'})
weightsP1.Date = datetime(weightsP1.Date,'ConvertFrom','datenum')
plot(weightsP1.Date,weightsP1.X)