Portfolio Performance for October 2008

Drawdown city. Stay in this game long enough and you'll encounter months like September/October. In fact, they happen so infrequently...it's almost like recalling a memorable storm from years back. I still remember the panic my mom went into whenever there was a hurricane in the Gulf. She'd stock up on food, plot the hurricane on those maps the National Hurricane Center would give out, and fret, fret, fret. 99% of those hurricanes would peter out, stall, or miss us entirely. But, she still remembered living through the devastation of Hurricane Carla...and felt the fear every summer 30+ years later.

The human mind is a funny, funny thing...behaving binary with pain. If you've never experienced the pain of a hurricane, snowstorm, loss of a loved one, or the falling knife of the market...you're set to 0. You operate without fear. But, once you experience the pain...you're set to 1. And everything you do from that point forward is now based off that pain. Based off that switch.

And that switch is a bugger to reset. Most people can't do it. The instant the pain hits they begin tweaking their life as if the odds of experiencing that pain again has increased to a 100% certainty. Funny part is...

• the odds of experiencing the pain hasn't increased
• all those tweaks won't do a thing to prevent future pain.

Smart people get stuck in this trap...a lot!

What's my point? Invest in the market knowing the worst will happen. The foundation of your investment strategy should be able to withstand the storm. If you're busy tweaking your strategy right now in an attempt to avoid the next storm, trying to pick and choose your investment spots, thinking all the work you're doing will sidestep the next storm because you figured out how to handle this storm...then your bit is set to 1. And this cowboy quote likely fits:

Timing has a lot to do with the outcome of a rain dance.

And with that the performance charts for the month of October 2008.






We're experiencing a fairly hefty drawdown as is the market. I've received several exit signals over the past 2 months. At one of the highest level of cash since investing in the market. And doing nothing but patiently waiting out the storm.

That, and preparing for a cold Missouri winter.

Later Trades,

MT

What I'm Researching...

Overview of RAMFS and TMPFS on Linux Posted: 06 Nov 2008 11:02 PM CST Map your memory as a drive? Wonder how this would work if you built a linux server with 32gb memory and mapped at least half that dedicated for simulations? How much faster would this be versus traditional disk-based sims?

Replacing multiple occurrences in nested arrays - Stack Overflow Posted: 06 Nov 2008 10:58 PM CST will this work in updating a dictionary of prices? if you have a dictionary of portfolio positions with values being python lists...would this be a good solution in updating the closing price of the stock (one of the items in the list)?

What I'm Researching...

Producing Open Source Software Posted: 30 Oct 2008 09:56 PM CDT very cool online book detailing the starting of an open source project.

OmniTI ~ Careers ~ Site Reliability Engineer Posted: 28 Oct 2008 12:04 PM CDT one of the best job descriptions I've read on working as an operations engineer. best two quotes: "If you don't grow, you'll fail." & "Think of it like any other fun and challenging job you've had -- now remove the margin for error." How true!

What I'm Researching...

Linux Server, Linux Hardware Posted: 26 Oct 2008 02:28 PM CDT pre-installed linux provider

system76, Inc. Posted: 26 Oct 2008 02:26 PM CDT pre-installed linux computers (laptops, desktops, servers).

The R fCalendar package (pdf) Posted: 26 Oct 2008 11:18 AM CDT date, time, calendar manipulations in R. Sample functions are diffTimeDate, isWeekday, isWeekend, and the very cool timeNdayOnOrAfter, timeNthNdayInMonth, timeLastNdayInMonth.

How To... Mount Your Computer Screen Posted: 26 Oct 2008 10:17 AM CDT details how to wall mount your monitor. very cool.

Javascript style dot notation for dictionary keys unpythonic? - Stack Overflow

Posted: 23 Oct 2008 06:59 AM CDT

great thread on object-style dot notation. instead of stock['id'], this thread shows how to create stock.id.

vizierfx - Google Code Posted: 22 Oct 2008 12:38 PM CDT really cool flex library to display graphviz graphs. haven't explored the flex toolset before...but may have to check it out.

z/OS Workload Manager - How it works & How to use it (pdf) Posted: 21 Oct 2008 12:18 AM CDT Great summary on Workload Manager (WLM)...including tips for setup and troubleshooting existing setups.

What I'm Researching...

RocketDock - About RocketDock Posted: 20 Oct 2008 12:17 AM CDT extremely cool application dock for windows.

Python Programming/Lists - Wikibooks, collection of open-content textbooks Posted: 20 Oct 2008 12:12 AM CDT Great collection of python list examples.

Introduction To New-Style Classes in Python Posted: 19 Oct 2008 01:18 AM CDT great explanation of python classes. check out the final part discussing the __slots__ feature. basically, reserve attributes...those not defined cannot be assigned.

PyTables User's Guide Posted: 18 Oct 2008 12:30 PM CDT html version of the pytables userguide.

rdoc:graphics:barplot [R Wiki] Posted: 17 Oct 2008 04:22 PM CDT R doc for barplot

Welcome to DrQueue Commercial Website Posted: 12 Oct 2008 11:44 PM CDT queue manager with python binding. looks to be used as a render manager...but could see other uses as well.

Building home linux render cluster Posted: 12 Oct 2008 11:30 PM CDT excellent article on building a cheap 24 core x 48GB ram linux cluster.

Portfolio Performance for September 2008

September came and went. October brought the perfect storm...I guess. Looking forward to October's portfolio performance in relation to the market...to see how bad things really are. Until then...let's cover September's performance.

September's VAMI


September's ROI


As you can see, not a great month of performance. And while the downside doesn't feel good...my greatest concern is the upside that will come. When it does...the portfolio will lag the market due to the relatively high level of cash. But, nothing we can do...but be patient and allow the system to do its job.

Last thing you want to do during turbulent times is hit the panic button. Or worse, try to figure this market out. You don't figure a hurricane out while you're in the middle of it. Don't buy a generator, food, and flood insurance during a hurricane. Those are things you buy prior. The only thing you can do when the storm hits is batten down the hatches and hope you prepared enough for the damage to come. After the storm is over...reassess what you did right and what was lacking. Oh, and clear those fallen trees from your portfolio.

On a side note...I've spent the weekend putting together a new office. I've bought several office pieces and trying to find the optimal setup. Once I've got everything moved in...I'll share some pics of the new digs.

Later trades,

MT

What's an Outsider to do?

I avoid watching all news programs...especially related to the market and economy. Avoid reading newspapers and for the most part news bloggers. My one exception is Howard Lindzon. I read him for his take on the entrepreneurial spirit...but with it have to eat the occasional brussel sprout when he starts pawing at the market's ups and downs.

Same goes with people. Typically, talk very little about the market to others. And rarely hear more than a peep or two about the market from others in the water cooler discussions.

That is until now. This recent market debacle has really changed things. Howard is causing me to eat mucho brussel sprouts. My wife is hearing about the market on Dr. Phil & Oprah of all things. And even my programming bloggers are discussing the economy and the hoozy whatsits of the markets.

So, what's an outsider to do? Well, we should ask ourselves what a maverick would do and do that. Or watch these videos for inspiration...





If those don't make you laugh...just remember my fellow mavericks...this too shall pass.

Later Trades,

MT

What I'm Researching...

Tips For Barplots in R Posted: 08 Oct 2008 12:27 PM CDT examples of barplotting in R - color the bars, horizontal axis, stacked bar graph, and side by side graphs.

R Functions and Procedures We Should Know Posted: 08 Oct 2008 12:26 PM CDT common functions in R - just a brief command set.

Gmail, Weather, Beauty on your Ubuntu Desktop | Quick Tweaks Posted: 08 Oct 2008 11:59 AM CDT very cool desktop for ubuntu.

What I'm Researching...

Linus' blog: .. so I got one of the new Intel SSD's Posted: 07 Oct 2008 10:02 PM CDT great analysis on evaluating SSD hard drives. read the comments for more info. as an aside...linus has a blog...cool.

pymc - Google Code Posted: 07 Oct 2008 12:45 PM CDT monte carlo in python? looks worth exploring further.

What I'm Researching...

The Sect of Homokaasu - The Rasterbator Posted: 07 Oct 2008 01:45 AM CDT Cool, print huge posters from normal paper - software breaks up images to fit on 8.5 x 11 paper. Hat-tip to my wife for finding this site.

PerTrac Support - Statistics Posted: 06 Oct 2008 12:43 PM CDT Great site covering formulas of investment stats. Useful for coding the performance part of the testing platform.

pickle(cPickle) vs numpy tofile/fromfile - Python - Snipplr Posted: 05 Oct 2008 11:09 PM CDT interesting code snippet comparing performance of cpickle and numpy to/from file routines. been thinking about this lately...using numpy directly or cpickle instead of using a bloated dbms for persistent storage of time series on the testing platform.

HintsForSQLUsers - Hierarchical Datasets in Python Posted: 05 Oct 2008 11:06 PM CDT covers many of the faq of SQL developers when developing with PyTables.

EasyvizDocumentation - scitools - Google Code - Easyviz Documentation Posted: 05 Oct 2008 09:55 PM CDT Python plotting interface to various backend plotting engines: Gnuplot, Matplotlib, Grace, Veusz, PyX, VTK, VisIt, OpenDX, and a few more. Seems like a fairly straight-forward interface. And choosing the backend used is a one-line import statement. Interesting.

PyX - Python graphics package Posted: 05 Oct 2008 12:25 PM CDT looks like a dead-simple plotting library in python to produce pub quality pdf/ps images. Need to explore.

What I'm Researching...

TinyMCE - Home Posted: 05 Oct 2008 12:12 AM CDT WYSIWYG Javascript WYSIWYG editor - haven't tried it...but may be worth testing on a new project of mine.

PyTables - Hierarchical Datasets in Python Posted: 04 Oct 2008 01:35 PM CDT the original python interface to the HDF5 library. Have tested this before...need to test again using new architecture. Original tests found speeds that were equivalent to SQLite but of course slower than CSV files.

Python bindings for the HDF5 library — h5py v0.3.1 documentation Posted: 04 Oct 2008 01:33 PM CDT a python interface to the excellent HDF5 library. worth testing in project.

Dive into Erlang Posted: 04 Oct 2008 12:24 PM CDT enjoyed reading this guy's take on Erlang. Of course, he had me with quoting Unix philosophy, "Do one thing and do it well."

Optimal RAID setup for SQL server - Stack Overflow Posted: 04 Oct 2008 10:35 AM CDT Excellent Q&A on choosing the optimal RAID config for disk i/o performance. By the by, stackoverflow is an awesome site for programmers!!!

What I'm Researching...

R Colors Chart(pdf) Posted: 03 Oct 2008 11:45 PM CDT breaks down the colors available to R - both number and symbolic name.

One R Tip A Day: barplot Posted: 03 Oct 2008 11:29 PM CDT Great examples of barplots in R.

Dabbleboard - Online whiteboard for drawing & team collaboration Posted: 03 Oct 2008 12:59 PM CDT Awesome drawing application - auto-recognizes shapes and smooths lines from raw drawings. Great tool for flowcharting, room designs, etc.

ode Like a Pythonista: Idiomatic Python Posted: 29 Sep 2008 09:21 PM CDT takes the basics of python up a notch. definitely pay attention to the dictionary and advanced string formatting examples.

My no-server personal wiki—Part 3 - And now it’s all this Posted: 02 Oct 2008 11:18 PM CDT Describes in detail how to design a personal wiki. I enjoyed reading the design...I've built a similar html document system in the past. But, never added the markdown features. May have to try this out.

What I'm Researching...

InterfaceLIFT: Wallpaper sorted by Date Posted: 29 Sep 2008 01:05 AM CDT awesome desktop wallpapers - free download.

Personal Finance Assistance « ActiveState Code Posted: 28 Sep 2008 03:41 PM CDT great code example of using python and sqlite.

scipy array tip sheet Posted: 28 Sep 2008 12:34 PM CDT brief coverage of constructing, indexing, slicing, and summation of arrays.

What I'm Researching...

Python/CDAT for Earth Scientists: Tips and Examples Posted: 28 Sep 2008 01:15 AM CDT great cookbook covering python & numpy. hat tip to the Smooth blog. Covers plotting, reversing arrays, etc.

Array creation — NumPy v1.2 Reference Guide (DRAFT) Posted: 28 Sep 2008 01:08 AM CDT Covers creating arrays in NumPy - covers recarrays. to create recarray: x = np.array([(1.0, 2), (3.0, 4)], dtype=[('x', float), ('y', int)]). Then to view as recarray: x = x.view(np.recarray). x.x

NumPy Reference Guide (DRAFT) — NumPy v1.2 Reference Guide (DRAFT) Posted: 28 Sep 2008 01:00 AM CDT great reference guide to using NumPy.

http://conference.scipy.org/static/wiki/demo_numpy2.py Posted: 28 Sep 2008 12:08 AM CDT example of creating structured arrays in numpy.

SQLite The Hammer Posted: 27 Sep 2008 01:16 PM CDT a great resource for SQLite.

What I'm Researching...

Econometrics in R (pdf) Posted: 26 Sep 2008 01:37 AM CDT Simple tutorial in R from a finance perspective.

SQLite Optimization FAQ Posted: 26 Sep 2008 01:27 AM CDT excellent guide to tuning SQLite. Need to try some of this stuff.

Programming in R Posted: 26 Sep 2008 01:14 AM CDT very comprehensive tutorial on R language. Covers plotting, creating functions/classes/methods, parallel programming, optimizations, etc. Great coverage of databases (sqlite).

R Graph Gallery (65) Bollinger Bands Posted: 26 Sep 2008 12:54 AM CDT great example of R stock charting.

Reading and Writing Data in R (pdf) Posted: 26 Sep 2008 12:51 AM CDT great primer on reading/writing large files in R language.

R functions to read ASCII price series Posted: 26 Sep 2008 12:34 AM CDT several functions to read price series in ASCII format.

R CSI Interface Posted: 26 Sep 2008 12:30 AM CDT R functions for interacting with the CSI Data platform

R: Econometric tools for performance and risk analysis. Posted: 25 Sep 2008 03:34 PM CDT performance analysis library covering the whole gamut of performance and risk analysis functions.

TWiki - the Open Source Enterprise Wiki and Web 2.0 Application Platform Posted: 25 Sep 2008 12:27 PM CDT one of the wikis to consider.

TiddlyThemes - Home Posted: 25 Sep 2008 12:23 PM CDT cool themes for TiddlyWiki

What I'm Researching...

Groovy Domain Specific Language Tutorial « InnovationStartups Posted: 24 Sep 2008 12:50 PM CDT nice example of a stock trading DSL. Not familiar with Groovy...research more.

Non-Programmer's Tutorial for Python/Contents - Wikibooks, collection of open-content textbooks Posted: 24 Sep 2008 12:55 AM CDT Great tutorial on python. - love the format.

The gplots Package (pdf) Posted: 23 Sep 2008 11:15 PM CDT another interesting plotting package in R language.

Barplot function in R

Much of my backtesting platform is text driven. Not that I'm opposed to graphs...just felt my time was better spent developing the foundation for the platform before adding bells and whistles. Little did I realize how difficult it is to find a simple graphing engine for the platform. Problem is...I'm old school...couldn't care less about flash graphs. Keep it simple.

Since I'm using python...figured I had to give the matplotlib library a try. It is nice...simple...but something was missing. Couldn't put my finger on it. So, dug around and played with the R language plotting libraries. A bit more my speed...though a bit particular in the settings. Anyway, here's a function I wrote to generate bar charts using R with a replacement for pie charts in mind...


#-----------------------------------------------------------------
# Simple bar chart - use instead of pie chart when possible.
#-----------------------------------------------------------------
barPie <- function(xSeries, chTitle="Your Bar Chart", xLab="X Label",
xDesc="%")
{
xSeries <- sort(xSeries)

# save off original settings in order to reset on exit
oldPar <- par(no.readonly=TRUE)

plot.new()

# set page margins in inches
par(mai=c(1,1.5,1,1))


# pad 30% for labels
# start plotting at 0.0 unless negative
if (min(xSeries) < 0.0)
{
xLim = c((min(xSeries) * 1.3), (max(xSeries) * 1.3))
}
else
{
xLim = c(0.00, (max(xSeries) * 1.3))
}

# horizontal barplot in color baby!
bp <- barplot(xSeries, horiz=T,
xlab=xLab, las=1, col=rainbow(length(xSeries)),
xlim=xLim,
axes=F, cex.names=0.7, main=chTitle)

# if x negative then start label at 0.0
# otherwise, start label at value of x.
xVals = ifelse(xSeries < 0.0, 0.0, xSeries)
text(xVals, bp, paste(xSeries, xDesc, sep=""),pos=4, cex=0.65)

# format x axis
xRange <- formatC(pretty(xSeries), 1, format="f")

axis(1, at=xRange, labels=as.character(xRange), cex.axis=0.75)
box()

#restore par value to previous state
on.exit(par(oldPar))
}


Used data from my portfolio to plot sector allocations and called the function...

sectors <- c(10.64,119.83,162.66,66.48,71.78,35.44,32.77,161.17,53.91,
101.81,53.38,231.45,31.24,103.01)
sectors <- round((sectors/sum(sectors)*100.00), 1)

# write to png driver
png("c:/taylortrade/rlang/sectors_test.png")

barPie(sectors, "Sector Allocation", "Pct Allocated")

# stop writing to png driver
dev.off()


And here's the result...

What I'm Researching...

Visualize real-time data streams with Gnuplot Posted: 22 Sep 2008 11:26 PM CDT perl script feeding Gnuplot to plot streaming data in real-time. Interesting find...hat tip to Hackszine.com

The plotrix Package (pdf) Posted: 22 Sep 2008 10:21 PM CDT need to review this...looks like an all encompassing plotting package for the R language. Barcharts, piecharts, gantt charts, oh my!

What I'm Researching...

Writing R Extensions (pdf) Posted: 21 Sep 2008 09:28 PM CDT the how-to of creating extensions to the R language.

The Hazel Tree - A Python Compendium Posted: 21 Sep 2008 07:21 PM CDT central location of texts covering python.

The fTrading Package (pdf) Posted: 21 Sep 2008 06:25 AM CDT R language package containing functions for ohlc plots, sharpe ratio, sterling ratio, maxDrawDown, rolling analysis, ema, sma, emwa, etc.

What I'm Researching...

Quick-R: Home Page Posted: 21 Sep 2008 01:37 AM CDT nice site covering all the R essentials - reading data, graphing, stats.

R mailing lists archive Posted: 21 Sep 2008 01:28 AM CDT search the R language mailing list.

Rtips Posted: 21 Sep 2008 01:26 AM CDT cookbook of the R language

Producing Simple Graphs with R Posted: 20 Sep 2008 10:47 PM CDT examples of various charts (line, bar, pie, dot, histogram) in R language

Creating Charts and Graphs with GNU R Posted: 20 Sep 2008 10:45 PM CDT brief tutorial covering pie, bar, scatter, and line charts in R language.

R Graph Gallery :: List of graphs Posted: 20 Sep 2008 10:26 PM CDT great gallery of R Language graphs.

R Graphical Manual Posted: 20 Sep 2008 10:16 PM CDT gallery of R language graphics by category such as Finance, Econometrics, SocialSciences, etc.

R Graphics Posted: 20 Sep 2008 10:13 PM CDT book on the graphics available with the R language. Very nice!

Chart of R Colors Posted: 20 Sep 2008 10:12 PM CDT table of colors available in R language.

Using Color in R Language (pdf) Posted: 20 Sep 2008 10:10 PM CDT showcases all the colors available in graphing with the R language.

Getting Started With Matplotlib's OO Class Library Posted: 20 Sep 2008 08:34 PM CDT brief summary of matplotlib's api.

Using Python for Interactive Data Analysis Posted: 20 Sep 2008 08:26 PM CDT Several excellent examples of using numpy and pylab (matplotlib) together.

scienceoss.com » Blog Archive » Creating a custom bar plot in matplotlib Posted: 20 Sep 2008 03:33 PM CDT interesting code examples of bar charts in pylab.