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1. Register a free account on Quandl.com.

Search for historical gold prices provide by London Bullion Market Association. They label these prices as “Gold Price London Fixing”. Download the data and keep the date column and the USD(PM) column. This dataset contains gold spot prices recorded at the daily frequency. You will need to convert this into monthly returns in Excel.

To do this, use the IF function to build a new column that takes the value of 1 if the date is the last day of the month and 0 otherwise. For example, 2020/9/30 should be denoted by 1, and 2020/9/29 should be 0. (Note that figuring out how to write this formula using IF is part of the challenge. You will find the month() function very helpful in writing this formula.)

Then use the Filter function under Data Tab to only keep the month-end dates. Copy this subset of data into a new spreadsheet.

Now you are ready to calculate the monthly returns of gold using the HPR formula. For example, the monthly return in Sep 2020 should be based on the prices at the ends of Aug 2020 and Sep 2020. Your experience with the first data project will be helpful here.