scrilla 1.0.3b0

a financial optimization program

scrilla: A Financial Optimization Application

This is a financial application that calculates asset correlations, statistics and optimal portfolio allocations using data it retrieves from external services (currently: AlphaVantage, IEX and Quandl). Statistics are calculated using Ito Calculus and should be consistent with the results demanded by Modern Portfolio Theory and Financial Engineering. The portfolios are optimized by minimizing the portfolio's variance/volatility, i.e. by finding the optimal spot on the portfolio's efficient frontier as defined by the CAPM model, or alternatively, by maximizing the portfolio's Sharpe ratio.

The program's functions are wrapped in PyQt5 widgets which provide a user interface (this feature is still in development and may explode). In addition, visualizations are created by matplotlib for easier presentation.

Required Configuration

In order to use this application, you will need to register for API keys at AlphaVantage, IEX and Quandl. Store these in your session's environment. scrilla will search for environment variables named ALPHA_VANTAGE_KEY, QUANDL_KEY and IEX_KEY. You can add the following lines to your .bashrc profile,

export ALPHA_VANTAGE_KEY=<key goes here>
export QUANDL_KEY=<key goes here>
export IEX_KEY=<key goes here>

If no API keys are found in these variables, the application will not function properly; be sure to load these variables into your shell session before using scrilla. The link below will take you to the registration pages for each service API Key,

AlphaVantage API Key Registration
Quandl API Key Registration
IEX API Key Registration

Optional Configuration

scrilla can be configured with the following environment variables. Each variable in this list has a suitable default set and so does not need changed unless the user prefers a different setting.

• RISK_FREE

Determines which US-Treasury yield is used as the basis for the risk free rate. This variable will default to a value of 10-Year, but can be modified to any of the following: "3-Month", "5-Year", "10-Year", or "30-Year".

• MARKET_PROXY

Determines which ticker symbol is used as a proxy for the market return. This variable will default to a value of SPY, but can be set to any ticker on the stock market.

• FRONTIER_STEPS

Determines the number of data points in a portfolio's efficient frontier. This variable will default to a value of 5, but can be set equal to any integer.

• MA_1, MA_2, MA_3

Determines the period in days used to calculuate moving average series. These variables default to the values of 20, 60 and 100, but can be set equal to any integer, as long as MA_3 > MA_2 > MA_1.

• FILE_EXT

Determines the type of files that are output by scrilla. This variable is ccurrently only defined for an argument of json. A future release will include csv.

• LOG_LEVEL

Determines the amount of output. Defaults to info. Allowable values: info, debug, verbose. Be warned, verbose is extremely verbose.

Usage

For a full list of scrilla's functionality,

scrilla -help

The main usage of scrilla are detailed below.

Optimization

A portfolio of consisting of the equities ALLY, BX and SONY can be optimized with the following command,

scrilla -opt ALLY BX SONY

By default, scrilla will optimize over the last 100 trading days. If you wish to optimize over a different time period, you may use the -start and -end argument flags to provide starting and ending dates in the YYYY-MM-DD format.

Also by default, the optimization function will minimize the portfolio variance. You can also specify the portfolio should be maximized with respect to the Sharpe ratio,

scrilla -opt -sh ALLY BX SONY

There are several other arguments you may use to configure your optimization program. The full list of arguments is shown below,

scrilla -opt -sh -start <YYYY-MM-DD> -end <YYYY-MM-DD> -save <absolute path to json file> -target <double> -invest <double> [TICKERS]

-target will optimize the portfolio with the additional constraint that its rate of return must equal target. Note the target return must be between the minimum rate of return and maximum rate of return in a basket of equities. For example, if ALLY had a rate of return of 10%, BX 15%, SONY 20%, the frontier of possible rates of returns resides in the range [10%, 20%]. It is impossible to combine the equities in such a way to get a rate of return less than 10% or one greater than 20%. Note, this assumes shorting is not possible. A future release will relax this assumption and allow portfolio weights to be negative.

-invest represents the total amount of money invested in a portfolio.

For example, the following command,

scrilla -opt -sh -save <path-to-json-file> -target 0.25 -invest 10000 -start 2020-01-03 -end 2021-05-15 ALLY BX SONY

Will optimize a portfolio consisting of ALLY, BX and SONY using historical data between the dates of January 1st, 2020 and May 15th, 2021. The portfolio will be constrained to return a rate of 25%. A total $10,000 will be invested into this portfolio (to the nearest whole share). The output of this command will look like this,

---------------------------------------------- Results ----------------------------------------------
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
----------------------------------- Optimal Percentage Allocation -----------------------------------
ALLY = 22.83 %
BX = 19.26 %
SONY = 57.91 %
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-------------------------------------- Optimal Share Allocation --------------------------------------
ALLY = 42
BX = 15
SONY = 56
-------------------------------------- Optimal Portfolio Value --------------------------------------
>> Total = $ 9893.98
---------------------------------------- Risk-Return Profile ----------------------------------------
>> Return = 0.25
>> Volatility = 0.201
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Note the optimal share allocation does not allow fractional shares. scrilla will attempt to get as close to the total investment inputted without going over using only whole shares. Also note the return of this portfolio is 25%, as this was inputted into the target return constraint.

Other Notable Features

1. Discount Dividend Model

scrilla will pull an equity's dividend payment history, regress the payment amount against its date and infer a linear regression from this time series. It will use this model to project future dividend payments and then calculate the current cost of equity and use that to discount the sum of dividend payments back to the present,

scrilla -ddm ALLY

Alternatively, you can visualize the dividend payments against the regression model,

scrilla -plot-div ALLY

2. Financial Statistics

   • Beta: scrilla -capm-beta [TICKERS]
   • Correlation Matrix: scrilla -cor [TICKERS]
   • Cost Of Equity: scrilla -capm-equity [TICKERS]
   • Risk-Return Profile: scrilla -rr [TICKERS]
   • Sharpe Ratio: scrilla -sharpe [TICKERS]

3. Stock Watchlist and Screening

Stocks can be added to your watchlist with,

scrilla -watch [TICKERS]

You can then screen stocks according to some criteria. For example, the following command will search your watchlist for stock prices that are less than their Discount Dividend Model (very rare this happens...),

scrilla -screen -model DDM

4. Visualizations
   • Discount Dividend Model: scrilla -plot-div [TICKER]
     • NOTE: THIS FUNCTION ONLY ACCEPTS ONE TICKER AT A TIME.
   • Efficient Fronter: scrilla -plot-ef [TICKERS]
   • Moving Averages: scrilla -plot-mov [TICKERS]
   • Risk Return Profile: scrilla -plot-rr [TICKERS]
   • Yield Curve: scrilla -plot-yield (not implemented yet)