[R-SIG-Finance] PerformanceAnalytics v0.9.7 released

Brian G. Peterson brian at braverock.com
Thu Oct 2 02:06:57 CEST 2008


We are pleased to announce the availability on CRAN of
PerformanceAnalytics version 0.9.7

Version: 0.9.7
Date: 2008-09-29
License: GPL
Copyright: (c) 2004-2008 Brian G. Peterson and Peter Carl
URL: http://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/PerformanceAnalytics/index.html
URL: http://braverock.com/R/

PerformanceAnalytics is a library of econometric functions for
performance and risk analysis of financial portfolios. This
library aims to aid practitioners and researchers in using the
latest research in analysis of both normal and non-normal return
streams.

We hope to release version 0.9.7.1 with some additional
documentation and a minor enhancement to the UpsidePotentialRatio
function within the week that didn't quite make it into 0.9.7,
but most users should be able to upgrade now (and use
update.packages() to update again later) .

PerformanceAnalytics now contains over 120 discreet public functions, 
with additional datasets, wrapper functions, etc.

New Functionality:

This release adds 39 new public functions, an example dataset,
and utilizes R's namespace capability.  We have also decreased the number 
of "Requires" packages to just "zoo", moving the rest to "Suggests" and 
loading them only when needed, with a warning or error (as appropriate) if 
they are not available.  This should lower both loading time and the memory 
footprint of using PerformanceAnalytics.

    Risk functionality

        We have extended the risk metrics provided by
        Performanceanalytics to include multivariate portfolio measures
        of Gaussian and Cornish fisher VaR and Expected Shortfall.

        Functions:
        * GES.MM
        * GVaR.MM 
        * mES.MM
        * mVaR.MM 

    Modified Sharpe Ratios

        Earlier versions of PerformanceAnalytics contained the modified
        Sharpe Ration based on the Cornish fisher expansion.  we have
        added additional modified Sharpe ratios to calculate portfolio
        ratios for both Gaussian and modified Cornish Fisher Var and
        Expected Shortfall of the multivariate portfolio distribution.
        Functions:
        * SR.GES.MM
        * SR.GVaR.MM
        * SR.mES.MM
        * SR.mVaR.MM
        * SR.StdDev.MM

        TODO: need to wrap the SharpeRatio function to take a "method"
        argument and return one or all.

    Style Analysis

        We are happy to announce that style analysis, long a goal of this
        package, has made significant progress in this release, with the
        addition of four new functions.

        These functions calculate style weights using an asset class
        style model as described in detail in Sharpe (1992).  The use of
        quadratic programming to determine a fund's exposures to the
        changes in returns of major asset classes is usually referred to
        as "style analysis".

        Functions: 
        * chart.RollingStyle
               calculates and displays those weights in
               rolling windows through time.
        * chart.Style
               calculates and displays style weights calculated 
               over a single period.
        * style.fit
               manages the calculation of the factor weights by method
        * style.QPfit
               calculates the specific constraint case that requires 
               quadratic programming

    Charts
        We've added three new graph functions in this release:

        chart.VaRSensitivity
            Creates a chart of Value-at-Risk estimates by confidence interval
            for multiple methods. Possibly useful for comparing a calculated
            VaR method to the historical VaR.

        chart.SnailTrail
            A scatter chart that shows how rolling calculations of annualized
            return and annualized standard deviation have proceeded through
            time.  The color of lines and dots on the chart diminishes with
            respect to time. May be helpful for showing the trend of the
            return/risk characteristics of the fund over time.

        chart.StackedBar
            This creates a stacked column chart with time on the horizontal
            axis and values in categories.  This kind of chart is commonly
            used for showing portfolio 'weights' through time, although the
            function will plot any values by category.  This is a primitive
            function and is expected to improve.

    Moments of a distribution

        We have added several functions to calculate standardized moments
        and multivariate moments of an asset or multivariate portfolio
        distribution.  When working with multivariate series, the joint
        distribution of the returns is to be preferred over the simple
        univariate distribution of the resulting return vector of a
        portfolio.  Once the multivariate moments are available, it is
        possible to compute the comoments, comoment matrices, and beta or
        systematic comoments.

        skewness
        kurtosis
        skewness.MM
        kurtosis.MM
            We've ported and reimplemented skewness and kurtosis from
            Rmetrics to allow for additional data classes as well as
            multivariate series.

        StdDev.MM
        multivariate_mean
        Return.centered
        M3.MM
        M4.MM
            We've additionally implemented the multivariate moment
            calculations for the first two portfolio moments (mean and
            standard deviation) as well as the third and forth mathematical
            moments.

        CoVariance
        CoKurtosis
        CoSkewness
            Calculates the covariance, coskewness. or cokurtosis of one asset
            with relation to another (scalar measure) utilizing the
            standardized central mathematical moments of the distribution.

        CoKurtosisMatrix
        CoSkewnessMatrix
            Calculates the N x N^2 co-moment matrix of assets to one another,
            can be utilized in a portfolio context.  This is a complete
            reimplementation of the prior functions in PerformanceAnalytics
            to calculate moments, and has been validated by our research work
            as superior to the prior implementation.

        centeredmoment
        centeredcomoment
            Used internally by PerformanceAnalytics to calculate centered
            moments for a multivariate distribution as well as the
            standardized moments of a portfolio distribution.  They are
            exposed here for users who wish to use them directly

        BetaCoVariance
        BetaCoSkewness
        BetaCoKurtosis
            Calculates the systematic or beta comoment of two assets or an
            asset versus a portfolio. used to assess diversification
            potential in a portfolio, or in multivariate multimoment
            portfolio optimization.

Significant Changes to existing functions:

    chart.BarVaR
        * Incorporates 'Return.clean' methods for using cleaning methods
          when charting forecasted VaR values.  
        * Handles multiple columns OR multiple VaR calculation methods
        * Can show cleaned returns overlaid on original data
        * Added horizontal line to show exceedences to most recent risk
          estimate

    Co-moments and Beta/Systematic Co-moments have been completely
    reimplemented, and are discussed above.

As always, we are indebted to the R-SIG-Finance community for your 
testing, suggestions, and support.

We hope that you find this package useful.  

Please let us know how you are using it, it helps motivate us to keep 
releasing code.

Regards,

   - Brian

If you've read this far, I'll note that one of us (Brian) is currently seeking 
a new permanent position.

If you find PerformanceAnalytics and R useful in your work, and need a senior 
quant, risk analyst, and technical architect on your team, please give me a 
call.

-- 
http://braverock.com/brian/
Ph: 773-459-4973 
IM: bgpbraverock



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