Multiple loop commands into one, "program error: code follows on the same line as open brace”

[Hans Koslowski]

Hi everyone,

I have a panel data set that consists of portfolio weights of 25 different currencies (called "Weight'name of country'") and net return currency spot rates of those 25 countries (called "netreturn_Spot'name of country'") which are both sorted by column. My goal is to compute portfolio returns per country based on a carry investment strategy.

I tried to “merge” several loop commands to multiply net spot returns of each country by the portfolio weight of the respective country.
I created the loop command as follows:

foreach var of varlist SpotCzechRepublic - netreturn_SpotUK {
    
    foreach `y' of nettreturn_Spot {CzechRepublic Mexico Austria Belgium Denmark France Germany Italy Netherlands Portugal Spain Iceland Israel Canada Norway Sweden Switzerland UnitedStates Greece Hungary Japan Poland SouthKorea SlovakRepublic UK
        
        foreach `x' of Weight {UK UnitedStates Poland Portugal SlovakRepublic Spain Sweden Switzerland Japan SouthKorea Mexico Netherlands Norway Greece Hungary Iceland Israel Italy France Germany CzechRepublic Denmark Canada Belgium Austria  
            
            gen pfreturn = Weight`y' * netreturn_Spot`x' if `x'==`y' 
}
}
}

However, I get an error code displaying “program error: code follows on the same line as open brace”.

Since I am a beginner, I don’t know whether I am on a complete wrong path or I just did a small syntax error. I also noticed in other discussions that you have to define a local first and then run those local variables in one loop, but I failed to apply it in my particular case...

It would be great if somebody could help me out!

Thanks,
Hans

[Marcos Almeida]

To start, you have one open brace and 3 closed braces. Also, "var" isn't presented after the first line.

[William Lisowski]

I think what you want is the following, where I have shortened the list of countries to make this example code more readable

foreach y of CzechRepublic Mexico Austria Belgium {
    gen pfreturn`y' = Weight`y' * netreturn_Spot`y'
}

[Sven-Kristjan Bormann]

The error message tells you exactly what is wrong with your code. After an opining brace, only comments are allowed. In your code, you have to change

foreach var of varlist SpotCzechRepublic - netreturn_SpotUK {
    
    foreach `y' of nettreturn_Spot {CzechRepublic Mexico Austria Belgium Denmark France Germany Italy Netherlands Portugal Spain Iceland Israel Canada Norway Sweden Switzerland UnitedStates Greece Hungary Japan Poland SouthKorea SlovakRepublic UK
        
        foreach `x' of Weight {UK UnitedStates Poland Portugal SlovakRepublic Spain Sweden Switzerland Japan SouthKorea Mexico Netherlands Norway Greece Hungary Iceland Israel Italy France Germany CzechRepublic Denmark Canada Belgium Austria  
            
            gen pfreturn = Weight`y' * netreturn_Spot`x' if `x'==`y'
}
}

to something like

 gen pfreturn=.
    foreach x in CzechRepublic Mexico Austria Belgium Denmark France Germany Italy Netherlands Portugal Spain Iceland Israel Canada Norway Sweden Switzerland UnitedStates Greece Hungary Japan Poland SouthKorea SlovakRepublic UK {
                  
            replace pfreturn = Weight`x' * netreturn_Spot`x'
    
}

That is at least how I understood your intentions in the previous code. Without having more details about your dataset, I can only make guesses about what might work for your dataset.

You should also probably read the help file for the foreach-command which you can find via

help foreach

in Stata. Reading the help file should give you a better understanding of what and why I changed in your code.

[Hans Koslowski]

Thank you guys very much for your help! William Lisowski with your suggestion I could compute monthly portfolio returns per country, that's exactly what I wanted. So, thank you very much again!