Questions tagged [returns]

The asset rate of returns is the profit on a particular investment; it includes any change in the asset value, interest, commission or dividends and so, all other cash-flows which an investors receive or pays due to the investment.

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11 answers
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Should I use an arithmetic or a geometric calculation for the Sharpe Ratio?

What are the advantages/disadvantages of using the arithmetic Sharpe Ratio vs the geometric Sharpe Ratio? Is one more correct? Or is one better in certain circumstances?
Kelly's user avatar
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29 votes
5 answers
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Should Sharpe ratio be computed using log returns or relative returns?

I am trying to reconcile some research with some published values of 'Sharpe ratio', and would like to know the 'standard' method for computing the same: Based on daily returns? Monthly? Weekly? ...
shabbychef's user avatar
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22 votes
1 answer
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Skewness and Kurtosis under aggregation

Returns possess non-zero skewness and excess kurtosis. If these assets are temporally aggregated both will disappear due to the law of large numbers. To be exact, if we assume IID returns skewness ...
Bob Jansen's user avatar
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20 votes
2 answers
1k views

How do you correct Max Draw-Down for auto-correlation?

When returns are auto-correlated, calculating a Sharpe ratio := $\frac {mean(x)}{\sqrt{var(x)}}$, (where $x$ are the returns) is complicated, but basically solved (see, e.g. Lo (2005)). Without the ...
Paul H. Lasky's user avatar
18 votes
7 answers
98k views

Calculating log returns using R

I am trying to calculate the log returns of a dataset in R using the usual log differencing method. However, the calculated data is simply a vector of zeroes. I can't see what I'm doing wrong. Here ...
Homunculus Reticulli's user avatar
17 votes
4 answers
17k views

Why do we usually model returns and not prices?

I think this is a quite similar question for most of you, however it is not completely understandable for me at the moment: Why do we usually use returns and not prices to model financial data in ...
jeffrey's user avatar
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15 votes
3 answers
14k views

Daily returns using adjusted close

I want to chart the daily returns of a stock, and I'm using Yahoo finance data to download historic data. I was told to use Adjusted Close, but there seems to be an issue with this. For ANTO.L, you ...
LJW's user avatar
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12 votes
3 answers
17k views

What kind of return can an average algorithmic trading firm achieve today?

What kind of rate of return can an average, equities-focused algorithmic trading firm expect to achieve today? I come from a background of control and optimization, working in the industry in China, ...
user1748356's user avatar
12 votes
2 answers
703 views

How to estimate the following model?

Suppose I have the following model: $$r_t=\sigma_t * \epsilon_t$$ where $r_t$ is the return at time t, $\sigma_t$ is the volatility, the model used to model this volatility is an exponentially ...
Stat Tistician's user avatar
11 votes
5 answers
14k views

Calculate Average Price, Cost, (Un)Realized P&L of a position based on executed trades

We have built an algorithmic trading software and need to calculate the following parameters for each position in our portfolio. Average Price Cost Realized Profit & Loss Unrealized Profit & ...
Andy Flury's user avatar
11 votes
2 answers
9k views

Returns and logreturns differences

I have a time series of stock prices and I tried to calculate simple returns and log returns. However, I end up that simple returns has positive mean, but log returns has negative mean. Is it possible ...
Lukas Tomek's user avatar
11 votes
2 answers
11k views

Annualzing the log of daily returns riddle

Two popular ways to measure returns are Arithmetic returns and Log returns. Let's define arithmetic (simple period) returns as: P(t) - P(t-1) / P(t-1). Let's define log return as Ln( P(t)/P(t-1) ) or ...
Ram Ahluwalia's user avatar
10 votes
2 answers
10k views

Definition of Return of A Long/short Portfolio

This can either be a silly question or a question with no sure rigorous answer but defined with some convention. Any way, here it is. What is the (industrial recognized) definition of the return of a ...
Hans's user avatar
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9 votes
2 answers
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Term structure of Equity returns

What is the meaning of term structure of equity returns. I know what term structure of interest rates means, but somehow i cant seem to relate them. Also, how would we measure them? Also in this paper ...
pppp_prs's user avatar
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5 answers
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Under the CAPM, how do I deal with market returns being below the risk-free rate?

Let's say I'm using CAPM to estimate the cost of equity, so I need expected market returns for the calculations. The standard approach is simply to compute arithmetic mean of an index (or rather its ...
Always Right Never Left's user avatar
9 votes
2 answers
915 views

What is a reasonable upper bound on the performance of a daily trading strategy?

I am backtesting an equity trading strategy which trades only once per day. Is there a general rule of thumb for the reasonable upper bound on the rate of return of such a strategy? For example, a ...
monksy's user avatar
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9 votes
2 answers
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Quantmod: what's the difference between ROC(Cl(SPY)) and ClCl(SPY)

I feel like I'm missing something fundamental here, but I can't shake the feeling that these two series should be equivalent. /edit: there is also dailyReturn(Cl(SPY)). I've seen all 3 of these ...
Zach's user avatar
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8 votes
3 answers
14k views

Correct way to find the mean of annual geometric returns of monthly returns?

Say I'm given I set of monthly returns over 10 years on a monthly basis. What is the correct way to find the geometric returns of this data? I ask because a classmate and I are on different sides of ...
tshauck's user avatar
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8 votes
4 answers
2k views

Reasons for negative autocorrelation

I am working with intraday stock prices. I have found that the autocorrelation between the returns is negative (significantly so, but the value is very small). I am aware of how to interpret negative ...
cecefuss's user avatar
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8 votes
5 answers
9k views

How to calculate compound returns of leveraged ETFs?

Forewarning: this is a complete newbie question :-) I am starting to learn about ETFs by trying to do the numbers. When learning about the compounding effect in leveraged ETFs, I wanted to simulate ...
Samik R's user avatar
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8 votes
3 answers
388 views

Can Gaussianity of returns depend on the time frame?

I would be interested in knowing if the fact that returns are Gaussian is disproved on all time frames, or if, for example, the 5 minute intra-day time frame could exhibits Gaussian returns assuming ...
Monolite's user avatar
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8 votes
2 answers
4k views

How do Return.portfolio and Return.rebalancing work in Performance Analytics in R?

I have a question about the function Return.portfolio/Return.rebalancing from the Performance Analytics package in R. I take ...
math's user avatar
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8 votes
2 answers
400 views

How do I statistically differentiate a series of prices from a series of returns?

I developed an optimization algorithm that uses returns (among other parameters) as input and basically output an allocation. As I'm pretty happy with the results, I am in the process of putting the ...
SRKX's user avatar
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8 votes
1 answer
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Should cointegration be tested using close or adjusted close prices?

When doing cointegration tests should I use the adjusted close price or just close price for the time series? The dividend of each stock is on different dates and can cause jumps in the data.
Freewind's user avatar
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8 votes
2 answers
5k views

Annualized Sharpe Ratio calculation

I'm trying to replicate the annualized Sharpe ratio of an buy-and-hold strategy for the Dow Jones Industrial Average index for a period consisting of multiple years. I got the daily DJIA (closing) ...
Wildman's user avatar
  • 81
8 votes
1 answer
572 views

Toy models of asset returns

When making simple agent-based models of banking systems to look at global properties (say systemic risk) one of the basic decisions you have to make is how to model returns on external (to the ...
Artem Kaznatcheev's user avatar
8 votes
3 answers
2k views

Using rolling returns in a multivariate linear regression?

I am trying to use fundamental factors such as PE, BV, & CFO in a multivariate linear regression with the response variable being the rolling 1 month returns. But this approach seems flawed as the ...
user1129988's user avatar
7 votes
2 answers
3k views

How to annualise the volatility of non-iid returns?

I have a series of monthly log-returns; let's assume the log-returns are normally distributed, but exhibit significant serial correlation. In the case of normal, i.i.d. returns, I can annualize the ...
Smackboyg's user avatar
7 votes
2 answers
10k views

Fama-French Data from daily to monthly returns

Ken French on his website publishes daily, monthly and yearly returns for the Fama-French 3 Factors model which are excess market (Rm-Rf), small-minus-big (SMB) and high-minus-low (HML) returns. I ...
conighion's user avatar
  • 111
7 votes
1 answer
15k views

How to annualize skewness and kurtosis based on daily returns

I'm trying to annualize the four moments based on a string of daily returns (continuously compounded) for 11 years. The formulas for the annualization of the mean and the standard deviation I did ...
Stephan's user avatar
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7 votes
2 answers
254 views

Portfolio returns with unequal asset return histories

Using the package PerformanceAnalytics in R, I am trying to calculate the return of an equal-weighted portfolio that contains 30 assets. However, these assets do not have the same starting point in ...
JD1992's user avatar
  • 71
7 votes
1 answer
3k views

Price volatility instead of return volatility for spread option parameter

I overheard someone at work today talking about a commodity spread option pricing model and he was asking our quant if he should use price volatility instead of return volatility as the volatility ...
strimp099's user avatar
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6 votes
2 answers
2k views

Calculate Daily Returns for Sharpe Ratio

For the purposes of Sharpe ratio, I calculate a trading strategy's daily returns using realized P/L only: $$ \frac{K(t + 1) - K(t)}{K(t)}, $$ where $K(t)$ is the cash balance after market close on day ...
Tom Tucker's user avatar
6 votes
2 answers
375 views

Comparing Returns on a Sector Basis

I'd like to compare the returns of a portfolio segregated by groups to the returns of those groups in total. So say for example I have a portfolio with 40% Industrials and 60% Technology, then over ...
tshauck's user avatar
  • 765
6 votes
1 answer
266 views

Why can I use equilibrium asset pricing models to predict future returns?

This is a general question that applies to the CAPM and any version of the APT (e.g. the Fama & French three factor model). Speaking in terms of the APT: Assuming a simple one-index version of the ...
shenflow's user avatar
  • 195
6 votes
1 answer
420 views

Control for non-synchronous trading in correlations

I am trying to replicate some results from the Betting Against Beta paper by Frazzini & Pedersen. In section 3.1, Estimating Ex Ante Betas, they illustrate their approach to correlations: [we ...
Mike Haye's user avatar
  • 193
6 votes
3 answers
1k views

Testing the validity of a factor model for stock returns

Consider the following m regression equation system: $$r^i = X^i \beta^i + \epsilon^i \;\;\; \text{for} \;i=1,2,3,..,n$$ where $r^i$ is a $(T\times 1)$ vector of the T observations of the dependent ...
Mayou's user avatar
  • 662
6 votes
1 answer
808 views

How to compute returns and daily VaR of a currency position?

I have a Forex trading account with a base currency USD. I am holding a position in EUR/JPY and would like to estimate my daily VaR. If I compute the EUR/JPY returns using the historic prices this ...
vkrouglov's user avatar
  • 247
6 votes
0 answers
370 views

What are the essential characteristics of asset prices?

I think the question has already been asked about stylized facts of asset returns; this question regards the essential characteristics and normative assumptions used to evaluate asset prices. I.e., ...
David Addison's user avatar
5 votes
3 answers
1k views

Risk-adjusted returns ratio that does not reward high risk for negative returns

Think of Sharpe ratio, Treynor ratio, or anything where (excess) returns $r$ are divided by something that represents risk, $\sigma$: $$\mathrm{performance} = \frac{r}{\sigma}$$ If the returns are ...
Reunanen's user avatar
  • 153
5 votes
6 answers
3k views

CAPM - Expected vs. actual returns

I'm trying to calculate alpha in excess of CAPM and have seen a few slightly different calculations for CAPM. The primary difference I am seeing is that some equations use expected market returns (e....
santorch's user avatar
  • 115
5 votes
2 answers
7k views

What is the difference between squared returns and variance?

I am trying to calculate 1-day ahead volatility forecasts using the exponentially weighted moving average, however I am unsure on how to read the formula provided within Risk-Metrics Technical ...
Harry Statman's user avatar
5 votes
2 answers
623 views

Multifractal Model, Generating Sample Paths with Correlations between Assets

I have studied option pricing using Geometric Brownian Motion to generate sample paths. Because of the normal distribution, it is easy to create a covariance matrix and get correlated asset returns. ...
UmaN's user avatar
  • 523
5 votes
1 answer
539 views

Predict probability of returns: How does changing volatility affect the return pdf?

I am trying to predict the future probability of stock returns based on the return distribution. Therefore I calculate the returns as $\frac{P(t)}{P(t-1)}$ for the whole daily data and fit a ...
Mh47's user avatar
  • 53
5 votes
4 answers
359 views

What is the industry standard for annualizing returns over non-contiguous time periods?

Suppose I am invested in the same fund for the first 200 days in 2013, some combination of 150 days in 2014, and the last 100 days in 2015. Further suppose that geometrically linking the daily returns ...
Alexis Olson's user avatar
5 votes
1 answer
4k views

The use of volatility from log returns and raw return

As far as I know, we usually use log returns( $ln\frac{p_{t+1}}{p_{t}}$ ) in quantitative finance. For example, let's say we have lots of monthly log returns data, $R_m$. Then, we can get the mean ...
piper's user avatar
  • 151
5 votes
1 answer
376 views

Is positive skewness preferences rational or irrational?

Is positive skewness preference rational or irrational? I have a great trouble understanding why investors should prefer positive skewness over negative one. Sometimes it is argued that preference ...
Soroush Kalantari's user avatar
5 votes
1 answer
245 views

Comparing a money-weighted return of my own portfolio with a benchmark ETF/other portfolio that is subject to the same cashflows

I am able to calculate the money-weighted return (XIRR equivalent in Excel) of my portfolio. Whilst I can compare this with ‘headline’ returns of ETF’s, Mutual Funds etc, I want to isolate the timing ...
Topdown's user avatar
  • 153
5 votes
1 answer
2k views

comparing total returns from various data vendors

I need to use various data sources to cover all of my data, and I am concerned by the discrepancies in total returns. Data vendors were helpful, but their simple documentation did not help resolve why ...
László's user avatar
  • 229
5 votes
2 answers
2k views

Volatility of a rolling window strategy

What methods can be applied to determine the volatility of strategy using a rolling window? Using normal standard deviation would bias the results as the returns will be highly correlated. Although, ...
Good Guy Mike's user avatar

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