quantstrat - Guy Yollin blotter 2014 presentation

Amarjit,

Prof. Yollin has addressed your poor etiquette.

I'll address the substantive portion of your email.

In Slide 56 charts.PerformanceSummary(returns, geometric=FALSE,
wealth.index=TRUE)


Comparing Slides 48 & 57 faber curves do not agree. Slide 48 has a value
of approx.10.63, Slide 57 has a value of approx.3.77 (wealth+2.77). It
cannot be both-ways regarding returns from b.strategy, it's either
geometric or arithmetic chaining?

So hypothetically speaking my boss says to me you have a strategy that
makes Net profit = 2,770,644, on an initial equity = 1,000,000 (slides
30-42), yet you say to me it makes cumulative return of 10.63 (slides
47-50), how does that work?

I think you answered your own question.  These are cash returns, without 
compounding.

So applying geometric compounding as though every dollar earned were 
somehow available for instant reinvestment (even though that is clearly 
not what the fixed order sizing of the strategy did) is clearly erroneous.

It seems that analysts need to know when to use geometric versus 
arithmetic chaining, so this is likely a typo in the slide code.  The 
responsibility for understanding that data continues to lie with the reader.

Brian

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