plotting multiple xts objects in one window

Question

I have found some answers to this online but for some reason am interpreting incorrectly because I cannot get it to work. My goal is to simply use the xts plotting feature (with the the way it creates the axis, gridlines,etc.) to plot multiple plots:

x <- xts(data.frame(a=1:100, b=100:1),seq(from=as.Date("2010-01-01"), by="days", len=100))
> plot(x, screens=1)
Warning messages:
1: In plot.xts(x, screens = 1) :
  only the univariate series will be plotted
2: In plot.window(...) : "screens" is not a graphical parameter
3: In plot.xy(xy, type, ...) : "screens" is not a graphical parameter
4: In axis(1, at = xycoords$x, labels = FALSE, col = "#BBBBBB", ...) :
  "screens" is not a graphical parameter
5: In axis(1, at = xycoords$x[ep], labels = names(ep), las = 1, lwd = 1,  :
  "screens" is not a graphical parameter
6: In axis(2, ...) : "screens" is not a graphical parameter
7: In title(screens = 1) : "screens" is not a graphical parameter

Another try:

> plot(x, plot.type="single")
Warning messages:
1: In plot.xts(x, plot.type = "single") :
   only the univariate series will be plotted
2: In plot.window(...) : "plot.type" is not a graphical parameter
3: In plot.xy(xy, type, ...) : "plot.type" is not a graphical parameter
4: In axis(1, at = xycoords$x, labels = FALSE, col = "#BBBBBB", ...) :
  "plot.type" is not a graphical parameter
5: In axis(1, at = xycoords$x[ep], labels = names(ep), las = 1, lwd = 1,  :
  "plot.type" is not a graphical parameter
6: In axis(2, ...) : "plot.type" is not a graphical parameter
7: In title(plot.type = "single") :
  "plot.type" is not a graphical parameter

To be clear: I can do this using lines but I wonder if there is a way to do this all at once.

Answer 1

You could coerce to zoo to use plot.zoo:

plot(as.zoo(x), screens=1)
plot(as.zoo(x), plot.type='single')

Or, you could install xtsExtra which has a newer plot.xts method

#install.packages("xtsExtra", repos='http://r-forge.r-project.org')
library(xtsExtra)
plot(x, screens=1)