Why is my plot not showing years on the x axis but random numbers and what code do i use to make it years?

In the screen shot my plot has got random numbers on the x axis instead of years, what code do i use to change this?

[Rik]

What code did you use in the first place? Matlab has very little random behavior. It might look that way to someone who doesn't understand how the function they are using works, or it might be a bug.

Have a read here and here. It will greatly improve your chances of getting an answer.

[Stephen23]

It looks like no X values were provided to the plotting function.

[LM]

 This is my code.

 %plot cumulative return of four trading stratergies
  plot(cum_ret_oos)

% Create xlabel
xlabel('Years out sample') 

% Create ylabel
ylabel('Cumulative Returns (logs)')

% Create title
title('Cumulative Returns of 4 Trading Stratergies')

% set the y-axis scale to log
set(gca,'Yscale','log')

[KSSV]

   plot(cum_ret_oos)

YOu have not provided x values..so the plot is w.r.t to indices....

Answer 1

[KSSV]

It should have got plotted w.r.t to indices....you need to change the x-axis ticks to the years you want. Read about datetick, datenum.

[LM]

I have tried both date tick and datenum but both have not given me dates, why not?

%plot cumulative return of four trading stratergies
plot(cum_ret_oos)

   startDate = datenum('01-01-2013'); 
  endDate = datenum('30-06-2015');

xData = linspace(startDate,endDate,30);

% Create xlabel
xlabel('Years out sample') 

% Create ylabel
ylabel('Cumulative Returns (logs)')

% Create title
title('Cumulative Returns of 4 Trading Stratergies')

% set the x-axis scale to log
  set(gca,'Yscale','log')

or using date tick in the second screen shot

Answer 2

[Steven Lord]

Here's a small example you can use as a model for your own code.

% Read in some sample data.
% This contains two variables: cdate (year numbers) and pop (population)
load census

% Turn the year numbers into a datetime array
x = datetime(cdate, 1, 1);

% Plot it. Note that the X axis contains year numbers
h = plot(x, pop);

% If you want finer-grained control of the formatting on the axes
% and you're using release R2016a or later, get the axes ruler
ax = ancestor(h, 'axes');
xrule = ax.XAxis;

% The xrule ruler has a number of properties. Let's customize the format.
%
% After running the line below the axes should show the ticks as
% Jan1xxx (1840, 1880, 1920, etc.) because the x vector I created
% contains January 1st for years that are multiples of 10
xrule.TickLabelFormat = 'MMMyyyy';