Javascript calculating IRR using Newton method

Question

I leveraged the github code (https://gist.github.com/ghalimi/4591338) to compute IRR using Newton method. When I replicated the codes step by step in excel, I'm able to find the optimized resultRate around -0.006. However when I ran the code directly, it generated a resultRate that doesn't accomplish a 0 NPV at all. Can someone please have a look and let me know what went wrong here?

FUNCTION IRRCalc(cash_flow ARRAY<FLOAT64>, date_delta ARRAY<INT64>){
    
      var positive = false;
      var negative = false;
      for (var i = 0; i < cash_flow.length; i++) {
        //dates[i] = (i === 0) ? 0 : dates[i - 1] + 365;
        if (cash_flow[i] > 0) {positive = true};
        if (cash_flow[i] < 0) {negative = true};
      }

      if (!positive || !negative) {return null;}
    
      var guess = (typeof guess === 'undefined') ? 0.1 : guess;
      var resultRate = guess;
      
      var epsMax = 1e-4;
      var iterMax = 100000;
    
      var newRate, epsRate;
      var resultValue = 0;
      var irrResultDeriv = 0;
      var iteration = 0;
      var contLoop = true;
      do {
        
        for (var i=0; i < cash_flow.length; i++){
          resultValue  += cash_flow[i]/Math.pow((1+resultRate),date_delta[i]/365);
        }
        
        for (var j=1; j < cash_flow.length; j++){
          var frac = date_delta[j] / 365;
          irrResultDeriv -= frac * cash_flow[j]/Math.pow((1+resultRate),(frac + 1));
        }
        
        newRate = resultRate - resultValue / irrResultDeriv;
        epsRate = Math.abs(newRate - resultRate);
        resultRate = newRate;
        contLoop = (epsRate > epsMax) && (Math.abs(resultValue) > epsMax);
      } while(contLoop && (++iteration < iterMax));
    
      if(contLoop) {return null};
    
      return resultRate;
}

Raw data:

cash_flow_date date_delta cash_flow

2017-07-18 0 -32984.35400000001
2017-11-23 128 744.2457850912499
2018-04-02 258 32093.94362265

Answer 1

The issue comes from below two variables are defined outside of do...while...

  var resultValue = 0;
  var irrResultDeriv = 0;

These statements need to be moved to immediately after the "do {" as they provide initialization for the two "for" statements immediately following.