st: Removing variables if missing a particular observation

[Nick Baker <nb419@cam.ac.uk>]

Hi all, 

I have a sample of mutual fund returns data and I wish to analyse only 
those funds with returns over a particular time period. Currently my data 
is of the format:

Date     fundret1   fundret3   fundret4
2004m3          .        2.2       3.15
2004m4          .        3.1       -1.5 
2004m5        2.3          .        2.1
2004m6        1.1          .        1.8


I have two problems. I want to delete all variables that have a missing 
value for 2004m3. At the moment I am trying the following:

foreach var of varlist _all {

drop `var' if missing(`var') in 1
}

since 2004m3 is the first observation, but this is not working. 


A second problem is that I wish to loop over all funds. They are numbered 
from 1 to 4722 but due to some prior deletions the sequence of funds does 
not include every value. I do not want to use _all because the dataset will 
include variables other than fund returns eventually. Any ideas if it 
possible to create a loop in such circumstances?

Many Thanks,

Nick Baker




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