Category Archives: Basics

Several Key PerformanceAnalytics Functions From R Now In Python (special thanks to Vijay Vaidyanathan)

Posted on by • Posted in AI, Asset Allocation, Basics, Data Analysis, Portfolio Management, Python, R, Replication, Reporting, Trading • Tagged , , • 1 Comment

So, thanks to my former boss, and head of direct indexing at BNY Mellon, Vijay Vaidyanathan, and his Coursera course, along with the usual assistance from chatGPT (I officially see it as a pseudo programming language), I have some more software for the Python community now released to my github. As wordpress now makes it very difficult to paste formatted code, I’ll be linking more often to github files.

In today’s post, the code in question is a python file containing quite a few functions from R’s PerformanceAnalytics library outside of Return.portfolio (or Return_portfolio, as it may be in Python, because the . operator is reserved in Python…ugh).

So, here is the “library” of new functions, for now called edhec_perfa.py, as a nod to Vijay Vaidyanathan’s Coursera course(s).

Here’s the link to the latest github file.

Now, while a lot of the functions should be pretty straightforward (annualized return, VaR, CVaR, tracking error/annualized tracking error, etc.), two functions that I think are particularly interesting that I ported over from R with the help of chatGPT (seriously, when prompted correctly, an LLM is quite helpful in translating from one programming language to another, provided the programmer has enough background in both languages to do various debugging) are charts_PerformanceSummary, which does exactly what you might think it does from seeing me use the R function here on the blog, and table_Drawdowns, which gives the highest N drawdowns by depth.

Here’s a quick little Python demo (once you import my file from the github):

import yfinance as yf
import pandas as pd
import numpy as np

symbol = "SPY"
start_date = "1990-01-01"
end_date = pd.Timestamp.today().strftime("%Y-%m-%d")
df_list = []

data = pd.DataFrame(yf.download(symbol, start=start_date, end=end_date))
data = data["Adj Close"]
data.name = symbol
data = pd.DataFrame(data)

returns = Return_calculate(data)

charts_PerformanceSummary(returns)
table_Drawdowns(returns)

This results in the following:

View post on imgur.com

And the following table:

View post on imgur.com

The NaT in the “To” column means that the drawdown is current, as does the NaN in the Recovery–they’re basically Python’s equivalent of NAs, though NaT means an NA on *time*, while an NaN means an NA on a numerical value. So that’s interesting in that Python gives you a little more information regarding your column data types, which is kind of interesting.

Another function included in this library, as a utility function is the infer_trading_periods function. Simply, plug in a time series, and it will tell you the periodicity of the data. Pandas was supposed to have a function that did this, but due to differences in frequency of daily data caused by weekends and holidays, this actually doesn’t work on financial data, so I worked with chatGPT to write a new function that works more generally. R’s checkData function is also in this library (translated over to Python), but I’m not quite sure where it was intended to be used, but left it in for those that want it.

So, for those interested, just feel free to read through some of the functions, and use whichever ones you find applicable to your workflow. That said, if you *do* wind up using it, please let me know, since there’s more value I can add.

Lastly, I’m currently in the job market *and* have a volatility trading signal subscription available to offer for those interested. You can email me at ilya.kipnis@gmail.com or find me on my LinkedIn profile here.

Thanks for reading.

A Tale of an Edgy Panda and some Python Reviews

Posted on by • Posted in Asset Allocation, Basics, Data Analysis, ETFs, Portfolio Management, Python, R, Reviews • Tagged • 10 Comments

This post will be a quickie detailing a rather annoying…finding about the pandas package in Python.

For those not in the know, I’ve been taking some Python courses, trying to port my R finance skills into Python, because Python is more popular as far as employers go. (If you know of an opportunity, here’s my resume.) So, I’m trying to get my Python skills going, hopefully sooner rather than later.

However, for those that think Python is all that and a bag of chips, I hope to be able to disabuse people of that.

First and foremost, as far as actual accessible coursework goes on using Python, just a quick review of courses I’ve seen so far (at least as far as DataCamp goes):

The R/Finance courses (of which I teach one, on quantstrat, which is just my Nuts and Bolts series of blog posts with coding exercises) are of…reasonable quality, actually. I know for a fact that I’ve used Ross Bennett’s PortfolioAnalytics course teachings in a professional consulting manner before, quantstrat is used in industry, and I was explicitly told that my course is now used as a University of Washington Master’s in Computational Finance prerequisite.

In contrast, DataCamp’s Python for Finance courses have not particularly impressed me. While a course in basic time series manipulation is alright, I suppose, there is one course that just uses finance as an intro to numpy. There’s another course that tries to apply machine learning methodology to finance by measuring the performance of prediction algorithms with R-squareds, and saying it’s good when the R-squared values go from negative to zero, without saying anything of more reasonable financial measures, such as Sharpe Ratio, drawdown, and so on and so forth. There are also a couple of courses on the usual risk management/covariance/VaR/drawdown/etc. concepts that so many reading this blog are familiar with. The most interesting python for finance course I found there, was actually Dakota Wixom’s (a former colleague of mine, when I consulted for Yewno) on financial concepts, which covers things like time value of money, payback periods, and a lot of other really relevant concepts which deal with longer-term capital project investments (I know that because I distinctly remember an engineering finance course covering things such as IRR, WACC, and so on, with a bunch of real-life examples written by Lehigh’s former chair of the Industrial and Systems Engineering Department).

However, rather than take multiple Python courses not particularly focused on quant finance, I’d rather redirect any reader to just *one*, that covers all the concepts found in, well, just about all of the DataCamp finance courses–and more–in its first two (of four) chapters that I’m self-pacing right now.

This one!

It’s taught by Lionel Martellini of the EDHEC school as far as concepts go, but the lion’s share of it–the programming, is taught by the CEO of Optimal Asset Management, Vijay Vaidyanathan. I worked for Vijay in 2013 and 2014, and essentially, he made my R coding (I didn’t use any spaces or style in my code.) into, well, what allow you, the readers, to follow along with my ideas in code. In fact, I started this blog shortly after I left Optimal. Basically, I view that time in my career as akin to a second master’s degree. Everyone that praises any line of code on this blog…you have Vijay to thank for that. So, I’m hoping that his courses on Python will actually get my Python skills to the point that they get me more job opportunities (hopefully quickly).

However, if people think that Python is as good as R as far as finance goes, well…so far, the going isn’t going to be easy. Namely, I’ve found that working on finance in R is much easier than in Python thanks to R’s fantastic libraries written by Brian Peterson, Josh Ulrich, Jeff Ryan, and the rest of the R/Finance crew (I wonder if I’m part of it considering I taught a course like they did).

In any case, I’ve been trying to replicate the endpoints function from R in Python, because I always use it to do subsetting for asset allocation, and because I think that being able to jump between yearly, quarterly, monthly, and even daily indices to account for timing luck–(EG if you rebalance a portfolio quarterly on Mar/Jun/Sep/Dec, does it have a similar performance to a portfolio rebalanced Jan/Apr/Jul/Oct, or how does a portfolio perform depending on the day of month it’s rebalanced, and so on)–is something fairly important that should be included in the functionality of any comprehensively-built asset allocation package. You have Corey Hoffstein of Think Newfound to thank for that, and while I’ve built in daily offsets into a generalized asset allocation function I’m working on, my last post shows that there are a lot of devils hiding in the details of how one chooses–or even measures–lookbacks and rebalancing periods.

Moving on, here’s an edge case in Python’s Pandas package, regarding how Python sees weeks. That is, I dub it–an edgy panda. Basically, imagine a panda in a leather vest with a mohawk. The issue is that in some cases, the very end of one year is seen as the start of a next one, and thus the week count is seen as 1 rather than 52 or 53, which makes finding the last given day of a week not exactly work in some cases.

So, here’s some Python code to get our usual Adaptive Asset Allocation universe.

import pandas as pd
import numpy as np
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
from pandas_datareader import data
import datetime as dt
from datetime import datetime

tickers = ["SPY", "VGK",   "EWJ",  "EEM",  "VNQ",  "RWX",  "IEF",  "TLT",  "DBC",  "GLD"]

# We would like all available data from 01/01/2000 until 12/31/2016.
start_date = '1990-01-01'
end_date = dt.datetime.today().strftime('%Y-%m-%d')

# Uses pandas_reader.data.DataReader to load the desired data. As simple as that.

adj_prices = []
for ticker in tickers:
    tickerData = data.DataReader(ticker, 'yahoo', start_date)
    adj_etf = tickerData.loc[:,'Adj Close']
    adj_prices.append(adj_etf)

adj_prices = pd.concat(adj_prices, axis = 1)
adj_prices.columns = tickers
adj_prices = adj_prices.dropna()
rets = adj_prices.pct_change().dropna()

df = rets

Anyhow, here’s something I found interesting, when trying to port over R’s endpoints function. Namely, in that while looking for a way to get the monthly endpoints, I found the following line on StackOverflow:

tmp = df.reset_index().groupby([df.index.year,df.index.month],as_index=False).last().set_index('Date')

Which gives the following ouptut:

tmp.head()
Out[59]: 
                 SPY       VGK       EWJ  ...       TLT       DBC       GLD
Date                                      ...                              
2006-12-29 -0.004149 -0.003509  0.001409  ... -0.000791  0.004085  0.004928
2007-01-31  0.006723  0.005958 -0.004175  ...  0.008408  0.010531  0.009499
2007-02-28  0.010251  0.010942 -0.001353  ... -0.004528  0.015304  0.016358
2007-03-30  0.000211  0.001836 -0.006817  ... -0.001923 -0.014752  0.001371
2007-04-30 -0.008293 -0.003852 -0.007644  ...  0.010475 -0.008915 -0.006957

So far, so good. Right? Well, here’s an edgy panda that pops up when I try to narrow the case down to weeks. Why? Because endpoints in R has that functionality, so for the sake of meticulousness, I simply decided to change up the line from monthly to weekly. Here’s *that* input and output. 

tmp = df.reset_index().groupby([df.index.year, df.index.week],as_index=False).last().set_index('Date')

tmp.head()
Out[61]: 
                 SPY       VGK       EWJ  ...       TLT       DBC       GLD
Date                                      ...                              
2006-12-22 -0.006143 -0.002531  0.003551  ... -0.007660  0.007736  0.004399
2006-12-29 -0.004149 -0.003509  0.001409  ... -0.000791  0.004085  0.004928
2007-12-31 -0.007400 -0.010449  0.002262  ...  0.006055  0.001269 -0.006506
2007-01-12  0.007598  0.005913  0.012978  ... -0.004635  0.023400  0.025400
2007-01-19  0.001964  0.010903  0.007097  ... -0.002720  0.015038  0.011886

[5 rows x 10 columns]

Notice something funny? Instead of 2007-01-07, we get 2007-12-31. I even asked some people that use Python as their bread and butter (of which, hopefully, I will be one of soon) what was going on, and after some back and forth, it was found that the ISO standard has some weird edge cases relating to the final week of some years, and that the output is, apparently, correct, in that 2007-12-31 is apparently the first week of 2008 according to some ISO standard. Generally, when dealing with such edge cases in pandas (hence, edgy panda!), I look for another work-around. Thanks to help from Dr. Vaidyanathan, I got that workaround with the following input and output. 

tmp = pd.Series(df.index,index=df.index).resample('W').max()
tmp.head(6)
Out[62]: 
Date
2006-12-24   2006-12-22
2006-12-31   2006-12-29
2007-01-07   2007-01-05
2007-01-14   2007-01-12
2007-01-21   2007-01-19
2007-01-28   2007-01-26
Freq: W-SUN, Name: Date, dtype: datetime64[ns]

Now, *that* looks far more reasonable. With this, we can write a proper endpoints function.

def endpoints(df, on = "M", offset = 0):
    """
    Returns index of endpoints of a time series analogous to R's endpoints
    function. 
    Takes in: 
        df -- a dataframe/series with a date index
        
        on -- a string specifying frequency of endpoints
        
        (E.G. "M" for months, "Q" for quarters, and so on)
        
        offset -- to offset by a specified index on the original data
        (E.G. if the data is daily resolution, offset of 1 offsets by a day)
        This is to allow for timing luck analysis. Thank Corey Hoffstein.
    """
    
    # to allow for familiarity with R
    # "months" becomes "M" for resampling
    if len(on) > 3:
        on = on[0].capitalize()
    
    # get index dates of formal endpoints
    ep_dates = pd.Series(df.index, index = df.index).resample(on).max()
    
    # get the integer indices of dates that are the endpoints
    date_idx = np.where(df.index.isin(ep_dates))
    
    # append zero and last day to match R's endpoints function
    # remember, Python is indexed at 0, not 1
    date_idx = np.insert(date_idx, 0, 0)
    date_idx = np.append(date_idx, df.shape[0]-1)
    if offset != 0:
        date_idx = date_idx + offset
        date_idx[date_idx < 0] = 0
        date_idx[date_idx > df.shape[0]-1] = df.shape[0]-1
    out = np.unique(date_idx)
    return out

Essentially, the function takes in 3 arguments: first, your basic data frame (or series–which is essentially just a time-indexed data frame in Python to my understanding).


Next, it takes the “on” argument, which can take either a string such as “months”, or just a one-letter term for immediate use with Python’s resample function (I forget all the abbreviations, but I do know that there’s W, M, Q, and Y for weekly, monthly, quarterly, and yearly), which the function will convert a longer string into. That way, for those coming from R, this function will be backwards compatible.


Lastly, because Corey Hoffstein makes a big deal about it and I respect his accomplishments, the offset argument, which offsets the endpoints by the amount specified, at the frequency of the original data. That is, if you take quarterly endpoints using daily frequency data, the function won’t read your mind and offset the quarterly endpoints by a month, which *is* functionality that probably should be *somewhere*, but currently exists neither in R nor in Python, at least not in the public sphere, so I suppose I’ll have to write it…eventually.

Anyway, here’s how the function works (now in Python!) using the data in this post:

endpoints(rets, on = "weeks")[0:20]
Out[98]: 
array([ 0,  2,  6,  9, 14, 18, 23, 28, 33, 38, 42, 47, 52, 57, 62, 67, 71,
       76, 81, 86], dtype=int64)

endpoints(rets, on = "weeks", offset = 2)[0:20]
Out[99]: 
array([ 2,  4,  8, 11, 16, 20, 25, 30, 35, 40, 44, 49, 54, 59, 64, 69, 73,
       78, 83, 88], dtype=int64)

endpoints(rets, on = "months")
Out[100]: 
array([   0,    6,   26,   45,   67,   87,  109,  130,  151,  174,  193,
        216,  237,  257,  278,  298,  318,  340,  361,  382,  404,  425,
        446,  469,  488,  510,  530,  549,  571,  592,  612,  634,  656,
        677,  698,  720,  740,  762,  781,  800,  823,  844,  864,  886,
        907,  929,  950,  971,  992, 1014, 1034, 1053, 1076, 1096, 1117,
       1139, 1159, 1182, 1203, 1224, 1245, 1266, 1286, 1306, 1328, 1348,
       1370, 1391, 1412, 1435, 1454, 1475, 1496, 1516, 1537, 1556, 1576,
       1598, 1620, 1640, 1662, 1684, 1704, 1727, 1747, 1768, 1789, 1808,
       1829, 1850, 1871, 1892, 1914, 1935, 1956, 1979, 1998, 2020, 2040,
       2059, 2081, 2102, 2122, 2144, 2166, 2187, 2208, 2230, 2250, 2272,
       2291, 2311, 2333, 2354, 2375, 2397, 2417, 2440, 2461, 2482, 2503,
       2524, 2544, 2563, 2586, 2605, 2627, 2649, 2669, 2692, 2712, 2734,
       2755, 2775, 2796, 2815, 2836, 2857, 2879, 2900, 2921, 2944, 2963,
       2986, 3007, 3026, 3047, 3066, 3087, 3108, 3130, 3150, 3172, 3194,
       3214, 3237, 3257, 3263], dtype=int64)

endpoints(rets, on = "months", offset = 10)
Out[101]: 
array([  10,   16,   36,   55,   77,   97,  119,  140,  161,  184,  203,
        226,  247,  267,  288,  308,  328,  350,  371,  392,  414,  435,
        456,  479,  498,  520,  540,  559,  581,  602,  622,  644,  666,
        687,  708,  730,  750,  772,  791,  810,  833,  854,  874,  896,
        917,  939,  960,  981, 1002, 1024, 1044, 1063, 1086, 1106, 1127,
       1149, 1169, 1192, 1213, 1234, 1255, 1276, 1296, 1316, 1338, 1358,
       1380, 1401, 1422, 1445, 1464, 1485, 1506, 1526, 1547, 1566, 1586,
       1608, 1630, 1650, 1672, 1694, 1714, 1737, 1757, 1778, 1799, 1818,
       1839, 1860, 1881, 1902, 1924, 1945, 1966, 1989, 2008, 2030, 2050,
       2069, 2091, 2112, 2132, 2154, 2176, 2197, 2218, 2240, 2260, 2282,
       2301, 2321, 2343, 2364, 2385, 2407, 2427, 2450, 2471, 2492, 2513,
       2534, 2554, 2573, 2596, 2615, 2637, 2659, 2679, 2702, 2722, 2744,
       2765, 2785, 2806, 2825, 2846, 2867, 2889, 2910, 2931, 2954, 2973,
       2996, 3017, 3036, 3057, 3076, 3097, 3118, 3140, 3160, 3182, 3204,
       3224, 3247, 3263], dtype=int64)

endpoints(rets, on = "quarters")
Out[102]: 
array([   0,    6,   67,  130,  193,  257,  318,  382,  446,  510,  571,
        634,  698,  762,  823,  886,  950, 1014, 1076, 1139, 1203, 1266,
       1328, 1391, 1454, 1516, 1576, 1640, 1704, 1768, 1829, 1892, 1956,
       2020, 2081, 2144, 2208, 2272, 2333, 2397, 2461, 2524, 2586, 2649,
       2712, 2775, 2836, 2900, 2963, 3026, 3087, 3150, 3214, 3263],
      dtype=int64)

endpoints(rets, on = "quarters", offset = 10)
Out[103]: 
array([  10,   16,   77,  140,  203,  267,  328,  392,  456,  520,  581,
        644,  708,  772,  833,  896,  960, 1024, 1086, 1149, 1213, 1276,
       1338, 1401, 1464, 1526, 1586, 1650, 1714, 1778, 1839, 1902, 1966,
       2030, 2091, 2154, 2218, 2282, 2343, 2407, 2471, 2534, 2596, 2659,
       2722, 2785, 2846, 2910, 2973, 3036, 3097, 3160, 3224, 3263],
      dtype=int64)

So, that’s that. Endpoints, in Python. Eventually, I’ll try and port over Return.portfolio and charts.PerformanceSummary as well in the future.

Thanks for reading.

NOTE: I am currently enrolled in Thinkful’s python/PostGresSQL data science bootcamp while also actively looking for full-time (or long-term contract) opportunities in New York, Philadelphia, or remotely. If you know of an opportunity I may be a fit for, please don’t hesitate to contact me on my LinkedIn or just feel free to take my resume from my DropBox (and if you’d like, feel free to let me know how I can improve it).

Let’s Talk Drawdowns (And Affiliates)

Posted on by • Posted in Asset Allocation, Basics, ETFs, R, Reporting • Tagged • 9 Comments

This post will be directed towards those newer in investing, with an explanation of drawdowns–in my opinion, a simple and highly important risk statistic.

Would you invest in this?

SP500ew

As it turns out, millions of people do, and did. That is the S&P 500, from 2000 through 2012, more colloquially referred to as “the stock market”. Plenty of people around the world invest in it, and for a risk to reward payoff that is very bad, in my opinion. This is an investment that, in ten years, lost half of its value–twice!

At its simplest, an investment–placing your money in an asset like a stock, a savings account, and so on, instead of spending it, has two things you need to look at.

cagr

First, what’s your reward? If you open up a bank CD, you might be fortunate to get 3%. If you invest it in the stock market, you might get 8% per year (on average) if you held it for 20 years. In other words, you stow away $100 on January 1st, and you might come back and find $108 in your account on December 31st. This is often called the compound annualized growth rate (CAGR)–meaning that if you have $100 one year, earn 8%, you have 108, and then earn 8% on that, and so on.

The second thing to look at is the risk. What can you lose? The simplest answer to this is “the maximum drawdown”. If this sounds complicated, it simply means “the biggest loss”. So, if you had $100 one month, $120 next month, and $90 the month after that, your maximum drawdown (that is, your maximum loss) would be 1 – 90/120 = 25%.

Maximum-Drawdown

When you put the reward and risk together, you can create a ratio, to see how your rewards and risks line up. This is called a Calmar ratio, and you get it by dividing your CAGR by your maximum drawdown. The Calmar Ratio is a ratio that I interpret as “for every dollar you lose in your investment’s worst performance, how many dollars can you make back in a year?” For my own investments, I prefer this number to be at least 1, and know of a strategy for which that number is above 2 since 2011, or higher than 3 if simulated back to 2008.

Most stocks don’t even have a Calmar ratio of 1, which means that on average, an investment makes more than it can possibly lose in a year. Even Amazon, the company whose stock made Jeff Bezos now the richest man in the world, only has a Calmar Ratio of less than 2/5, with a maximum loss of more than 90% in the dot-com crash. The S&P 500, again, “the stock market”, since 1993, has a Calmar Ratio of around 1/6. That is, the worst losses can take *years* to make back.

A lot of wealth advisers like to say that they recommend a large holding of stocks for young people. In my opinion, whether you’re young or old, losing half of everything hurts, and there are much better ways to make money than to simply buy and hold a collection of stocks.

****

For those with coding skills, one way to gauge just how good or bad an investment is, is this:

An investment has a history–that is, in January, it made 3%, in February, it lost 2%, in March, it made 5%, and so on. By shuffling that history around, so that say, January loses 2%, February makes 5%, and March makes 3%, you can create an alternate history of the investment. It will start and end in the same place, but the journey will be different. For investments that have existed for a few years, it is possible to create many different histories, and compare the Calmar ratio of the original investment to its shuffled “alternate histories”. Ideally, you want the investment to be ranked among the highest possible ways to have made the money it did.

To put it simply: would you rather fall one inch a thousand times, or fall a thousand inches once? Well, the first one is no different than jumping rope. The second one will kill you.

Here is some code I wrote in R (if you don’t code in R, don’t worry) to see just how the S&P 500 (the stock market) did compared to how it could have done.

require(downloader)
require(quantmod)
require(PerformanceAnalytics)
require(TTR)
require(Quandl)
require(data.table)

SPY <- Quandl("EOD/SPY", start_date="1990-01-01", type = "xts")
SPYrets <- na.omit(Return.calculate(SPY$Adj_Close))

spySims <- list()
set.seed(123)
for(i in 1:999) {
  simulatedSpy <- xts(sample(coredata(SPYrets), size = length(SPYrets), replace = FALSE), order.by=index(SPYrets))
  colnames(simulatedSpy) <- paste("sampleSPY", i, sep="_")
  spySims[[i]] <- simulatedSpy
}
spySims <- do.call(cbind, spySims)
spySims <- cbind(spySims, SPYrets)
colnames(spySims)[1000] <- "Original SPY"

dailyReturnCAGR <- function(rets) {
  return(prod(1+rets)^(252/length(rets))-1)
}

rets <- sapply(spySims, dailyReturnCAGR)
drawdowns <- maxDrawdown(spySims)
calmars <- rets/drawdowns
ranks <- rank(calmars)
plot(density(as.numeric(calmars)), main = 'Calmars of reshuffled SPY, realized reality in red')
abline(v=as.numeric(calmars[1000]), col = 'red')

This is the resulting plot:

spyCalmars

That red line is the actual performance of the S&P 500 compared to what could have been. And of the 1000 different simulations, only 91 did worse than what happened in reality.

This means that the stock market isn’t a particularly good investment, and that you can do much better using tactical asset allocation strategies.

****

One site I’m affiliated with, is AllocateSmartly. It is a cheap investment subscription service ($30 a month) that compiles a collection of asset allocation strategies that perform better than many wealth advisers. When you combine some of those strategies, the performance is better still. To put it into perspective, one model strategy I’ve come up with has this performance:
allocateSmartlyModelPortfolio

In this case, the compound annualized growth rate is nearly double that of the maximum loss. For those interested in something a bit more aggressive, this strategy ensemble uses some fairly conservative strategies in its approach.

****

In conclusion, when considering how to invest your money, keep in mind both the reward, and the risk. One very simple and important way to understand risk is how much an investment can possibly lose, from its highest, to its lowest value following that peak. When you combine the reward and the risk, you can get a ratio that tells you about how much you can stand to make for every dollar lost in an investment’s worst performance.

Thanks for reading.

NOTE: I am interested in networking opportunities, projects, and full-time positions related to my skill set. If you are looking to collaborate, please contact me on my LinkedIn here.