Even better than xlsread, readtable would be a much better and modern option. If the header line that is skipped actually contains columns names readtable could even parse these. Skipping it, as in the original code:
kd = readtable('KD.csv', 'delimiter', ';', 'ReadVariableNames', false, 'HeaderLines', 1);
kd.Properties.VariableNames = {'dt', 'val', 'exch'}; %name the columns of the table
Note that readtable is usually clever enough to detect the delimiter, number of lines to skip and whether or not the variable names are included, so:
kd = readtable('KD.csv');
may be enough.
