Monthly average returns

[Manos]

Hi to all,

I am new in SAS and I really would appreciate your help in how to continue with my data.

I have monthly average returns of an index for 20 years in two columns the one is the date column with the additional month and the other column is the return for the month.

So now my data is something like this:

date             return

1925/01        2,34

1925/02        3,76

1925/03        2,69

This keeps going until 12/1945. However I care about the average return of each month (January, February,..., December) for the whole period of the 20 years. So i want to transform my data in this form.

Month    Average Monthly return 1925-1945

Jan              2,98

Feb             3,67

March          3,29

Jun              2,43

Jul              .....

Aug            .....

Sept            .....

Οct            ......

Nov           .....

Dec           2,86

So i want know the average return individually for each for this period. I hope I am clear in what I am asking.

Thank you in advance

[Haikuo]

Question: How is your date variable constructed? Is it a SAS date (numeric variable) or just a char as "1925/01"?

[Manos]

Its numeric variable, (you are right, should specify that.)

dates	return
19260130	0.023174
19260227	-0.053510
19260331	-0.096824
19260430	0.032946
19260528	0.001035
19260630	0.050487
19260731	0.013076
19260831	0.031002
19260930	-0.006499
19261030	-0.034630

[Haikuo]

This hopefully can get you started:

proc sql;

  create table want as

  select put(input(put(dates,8.),yymmdd8.),monname3.) as month, mean(return) as Average_1925_1945 from have

  group by month

;quit;

Haikuo

[TomKari]

Another option:

PROC MEANS DATA=have MEAN;

VAR return;

CLASS date;

FORMAT date MONNAME9.;

RUN;

Tom

[Manos]

Thank you both you have been really helpful, I managed to proceed!