R Code to download Datasets from Kenneth French’s famous website.
Version 1.1.1 corrects a small error for publication on CRAN.
One often needs those datasets for further empirical work and it is a tedious effort to download the (zipped) csv, open and then manually separate the contained datasets. This package downloads them automatically, and converts them to a list of xts-objects that contain all the information from the csv-files.
Original code from MasimovR https://github.com/MasimovR/. Was then heavily redacted by me.
You can install FFdownload from CRAN with
install.packages("FFdownload")or directly from github with:
# install.packages("devtools")
devtools::install_github("sstoeckl/FFdownload")This is the quick-starter example. It just retrieves the data and provides it for easy usage!
library(FFdownload)
library(tidyverse)
FFdownload(inputlist = c("F-F_Research_Data_5_Factors_2x3"), output_file = "FFdata.RData", format = "tbl")
#> | | | 0% | |=================================== | 50% | |======================================================================| 100%
load("FFdata.RData")
FFdata$`x_F-F_Research_Data_5_Factors_2x3`$monthly$Temp2 |>
tidyr::pivot_longer(cols = -date, names_to = "FFFactors", values_to = "Value") |>
group_by(FFFactors) |> mutate(Price=cumprod(1+Value/100)) |>
ggplot2::ggplot(aes(x = date, col = FFFactors, y = Price)) + geom_line(lwd=1.2) +
theme_bw() + theme(legend.position="bottom")
#> Warning: The `trans` argument of `continuous_scale()` is deprecated as of ggplot2 3.5.0.
#> ℹ Please use the `transform` argument instead.
#> This warning is displayed once every 8 hours.
#> Call `lifecycle::last_lifecycle_warnings()` to see where this warning was
#> generated.
In this example, we use FFDwonload to
- get a list of all available monthly zip-files and save that files as temp.txt.
temptxt <- tempfile(fileext = ".txt")
# example_1: Use FFdownload to get a list of all monthly zip-files. Save that list as temptxt.
FFdownload(exclude_daily=TRUE,download=FALSE,download_only=TRUE,listsave=temptxt)FFlist <- readr::read_csv(temptxt) %>% dplyr::select(2) %>% dplyr::rename(Files=x)
FFlist %>% dplyr::slice(1:3,(dplyr::n()-2):dplyr::n())
#> # A tibble: 6 × 1
#> Files
#> <chr>
#> 1 F-F_Research_Data_Factors_CSV.zip
#> 2 F-F_Research_Data_Factors_weekly_CSV.zip
#> 3 F-F_Research_Data_Factors_daily_CSV.zip
#> 4 Emerging_Markets_4_Portfolios_BE-ME_OP_CSV.zip
#> 5 Emerging_Markets_4_Portfolios_OP_INV_CSV.zip
#> 6 Emerging_Markets_4_Portfolios_BE-ME_INV_CSV.zip- Next, after inspecting the list we specify a vector
inputlistto only download the datasets we actually need.
tempd <- tempdir()
inputlist <- c("F-F_Research_Data_Factors","F-F_Momentum_Factor","F-F_ST_Reversal_Factor","F-F_LT_Reversal_Factor")
FFdownload(exclude_daily=TRUE,tempd=tempd,download=TRUE,download_only=TRUE,inputlist=inputlist)- In the final step we process the downloaded files (formatting the output data.frames as tibbles for direct proceeding):
tempf <- paste0(tempd,"\\FFdata.RData")
getwd()
#> [1] "D:/OneDrive - University of Liechtenstein/ROOT/Packages/ffdownload"
FFdownload(output_file = tempf, exclude_daily=TRUE,tempd=tempd,download=FALSE,
download_only=FALSE,inputlist = inputlist, format="tbl")
#> | | | 0% | |================== | 25% | |=================================== | 50% | |==================================================== | 75% | |======================================================================| 100%- Then we check that everything worked and output a combined file of monthly factors (only show first 5 rows).
library(timetk)
load(file = tempf)
FFdata$`x_F-F_Research_Data_Factors`$monthly$Temp2 %>%
left_join(FFdata$`x_F-F_Momentum_Factor`$monthly$Temp2, by="date") %>%
left_join(FFdata$`x_F-F_LT_Reversal_Factor`$monthly$Temp2,by="date") %>%
left_join(FFdata$`x_F-F_ST_Reversal_Factor`$monthly$Temp2,by="date") %>% head()
#> # A tibble: 6 × 8
#> date Mkt.RF SMB HML RF Mom LT_Rev ST_Rev
#> <yearmon> <dbl> <dbl> <dbl> <dbl> <dbl> <dbl> <dbl>
#> 1 Jul 1926 2.96 -2.56 -2.43 0.22 NA NA -1.87
#> 2 Aug 1926 2.64 -1.17 3.82 0.25 NA NA 1.43
#> 3 Sep 1926 0.36 -1.4 0.13 0.23 NA NA -0.17
#> 4 Okt 1926 -3.24 -0.09 0.7 0.32 NA NA -2.11
#> 5 Nov 1926 2.53 -0.1 -0.51 0.31 NA NA 1
#> 6 Dez 1926 2.62 -0.03 -0.05 0.28 NA NA 2.01- No we do the same with annual data:
FFfive <- FFdata$`x_F-F_Research_Data_Factors`$annual$`annual_factors:_january-december` %>%
left_join(FFdata$`x_F-F_Momentum_Factor`$annual$`january-december` ,by="date") %>%
left_join(FFdata$`x_F-F_LT_Reversal_Factor`$annual$`january-december`,by="date") %>%
left_join(FFdata$`x_F-F_ST_Reversal_Factor`$annual$`january-december` ,by="date")
FFfive %>% head()
#> # A tibble: 6 × 8
#> date Mkt.RF SMB HML RF Mom LT_Rev ST_Rev
#> <yearmon> <dbl> <dbl> <dbl> <dbl> <dbl> <dbl> <dbl>
#> 1 Dez 1927 29.5 -2.04 -4.54 3.12 24.1 NA -17.7
#> 2 Dez 1928 35.4 4.51 -6.17 3.56 29.1 NA -10.8
#> 3 Dez 1929 -19.5 -30.7 11.7 4.75 21.1 NA -15.0
#> 4 Dez 1930 -31.2 -5.17 -11.5 2.41 25.7 NA -0.86
#> 5 Dez 1931 -45.1 3.7 -14.0 1.07 23.8 -3.24 24.2
#> 6 Dez 1932 -9.39 4.4 11.1 0.96 -21.8 9.27 30.5- Finally we plot wealth indices for 6 of these factors:
FFfive %>%
pivot_longer(Mkt.RF:ST_Rev,names_to="FFVar",values_to="FFret") %>% mutate(FFret=FFret/100,date=as.Date(date)) %>%
filter(date>="1960-01-01",!FFVar=="RF") %>% group_by(FFVar) %>% arrange(FFVar,date) %>%
mutate(FFret=ifelse(date=="1960-01-01",1,FFret),FFretv=cumprod(1+FFret)-1) %>%
ggplot(aes(x=date,y=FFretv,col=FFVar,type=FFVar)) + geom_line(lwd=1.2) + scale_y_log10() +
labs(title="FF5 Factors plus Momentum", subtitle="Cumulative wealth plots",ylab="cum. returns") +
scale_colour_viridis_d("FFvar") +
theme_bw() + theme(legend.position="bottom")
#> Warning in transformation$transform(x): NaNs wurden erzeugt
#> Warning in scale_y_log10(): log-10 transformation introduced infinite values.
#> Warning: Removed 11 rows containing missing values or values outside the scale range
#> (`geom_line()`).
I am grateful to Kenneth French for providing all this great research data on his website! Our lives would be so much harder without this boost for productivity. I am also grateful for the kind conversation with Kenneth with regard to this package: He appreciates my work on this package giving others easier access to his data sets!