PerformanceAnalytics Charts and Tables Overview

Peter Carl & Brian G. Peterson

February 5, 2020

Abstract
This vignette gives a brief overview of (some of) the graphics and display wrapper
functionality contained in PerformanceAnalytics including most of the charts and
tables . For a more complete overview of the package’s functionality and extensibility
see the manual pages. We develop the examples using data for six (hypothetical)
managers, a peer index, and an asset class index.

Contents
1 Introduction 2

2 Set up PerformanceAnalytics 2
2.1 Install PerformanceAnalytics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
2.2 Load and review data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
2.3 Create charts and tables for presentation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

3 Create Charts and Tables 6

3.1 Create performance charts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
3.2 Create a monthly returns table . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
3.3 Calculate monthly statistics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
3.4 Compare distributions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
3.5 Show relative return and risk . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
3.6 Examine performance consistency . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
3.7 Display relative performance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
3.8 Measure relative performance to a benchmark . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
3.9 Calculate Downside Risk . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24

4 Conclusion 26

1
1 Introduction
PerformanceAnalytics is a library of functions designed for evaluating the performance
and risk characteristics of financial assets or funds. In particular, we have focused on
functions that have appeared in the academic literature over the past several years, but
had no functional equivalent in R.
Our goal for PerformanceAnalytics is to make it simple for someone to ask and
answer questions about performance and risk as part of a broader investment decision-
making process. There is no magic bullet here – there won’t be one right answer delivered
in these metrics and charts. Investments must be made in context of investment objectives.
But what this library aspires to do is help the decision-maker accrete evidence organized
to answer a specific question that is pertinent to the decision at hand. Our hope is that
using such tools to uncover information and ask better questions will, in turn, create a
more informed investor and help them ask better quality decisions.
This vignette provides a demonstration of some of the capabilities of PerformanceAn-
alytics. We focus on the graphs and tables, but comment on some other metrics along
the way. These examples are not intended to be complete, but they should provide an
indication of the kinds of analysis that can be done. Other examples are available in the
help pages of the functions described in the main page of PerformanceAnalytics.

2 Set up PerformanceAnalytics
These examples assume the reader has basic knowledge of R and understands how to in-
stall R, read and manipulate data, and create basic calculations. For further assistance,
please see http://cran.r-project.org/doc/manuals/R-intro.pdf and other available
materials at http://cran.r-project.org. This section will begin with installation, dis-
cuss the example data set, and provide an overview of charts attributes that will be used
in the examples that follow.

2.1 Install PerformanceAnalytics

As of version 0.9.4, PerformanceAnalytics is available via CRAN, but you will need
version 0.9.5 or later to replicate the examples that follow. R users with connectivity can
simply type: install.packages("PerformanceAnalytics"). Or, if you already have
an earlier version installed, see update.packages. A number of packages are required,
including Hmisc, zoo, and the various Rmetrics packages such as fBasics, fCalendar, and
fExtremes. After installing PerformanceAnalytics, load it into your active R session
using library("PerformanceAnalytics").

2
 Figure 1: First Lines of the managers Object

> data(managers)
> #managers=read.csv("/home/peter/dev/R/managers.csv",row.names=1)
> head(managers)

HAM1 HAM2 HAM3 HAM4 HAM5 HAM6 EDHEC LS EQ SP500 TR

1996-01-31 0.0074 NA 0.0349 0.0222 NA NA NA 0.0340
1996-02-29 0.0193 NA 0.0351 0.0195 NA NA NA 0.0093
1996-03-31 0.0155 NA 0.0258 -0.0098 NA NA NA 0.0096
1996-04-30 -0.0091 NA 0.0449 0.0236 NA NA NA 0.0147
1996-05-31 0.0076 NA 0.0353 0.0028 NA NA NA 0.0258
1996-06-30 -0.0039 NA -0.0303 -0.0019 NA NA NA 0.0038
US 10Y TR US 3m TR
1996-01-31 0.00380 0.00456
1996-02-29 -0.03532 0.00398
1996-03-31 -0.01057 0.00371
1996-04-30 -0.01739 0.00428
1996-05-31 -0.00543 0.00443
1996-06-30 0.01507 0.00412

2.2 Load and review data

First we load the data used in all of the examples that follow. As you can see in
Figure 1, managers is a data frame that contains columns of monthly returns for six
hypothetical asset managers (HAM1 through HAM6), the EDHEC Long-Short Equity
hedge fund index, the S&P 500 total returns, and total return series for the US Treasury
10-year bond and 3-month bill. Monthly returns for all series end in December 2006 and
begin at different periods starting from January 1996. Similar data could be constructed
using mymanagers=read.csv("/path/to/file/mymanagers.csv",row.names=1), where
the first column contains dates in the YYYY-MM-DD format.
A quick sidenote: this library is applicable to return (rather than price) data, and has
been tested mostly on a monthly scale. Many library functions will work with regular data
at different scales (e.g., daily, weekly, etc.) or irregular return data as well. See function
CalculateReturns for calculating returns from prices, and be aware that the zoo library’s
aggregate function has methods for tseries and zoo timeseries data classes to rationally
coerce irregular data into regular data of the correct periodicity.
With the data object in hand, we group together columns of interest make the examples
easier to follow. As shown in Figure 2, we first confirm the dimensions of the object and

3
 Figure 2: Assess and Organize the Data

> dim(managers)

[1] 132 10

> managers.length = dim(managers)[1]

> colnames(managers)

[1] "HAM1" "HAM2" "HAM3" "HAM4" "HAM5"

[6] "HAM6" "EDHEC LS EQ" "SP500 TR" "US 10Y TR" "US 3m TR"

> manager.col = 1
> peers.cols = c(2,3,4,5,6)
> indexes.cols = c(7,8)
> Rf.col = 10
> #factors.cols = NA
> trailing12.rows = ((managers.length - 11):managers.length)
> trailing12.rows

[1] 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132

> trailing36.rows = ((managers.length - 35):managers.length)

> trailing60.rows = ((managers.length - 59):managers.length)
> #assume contiguous NAs - this may not be the way to do it na.contiguous()?
> frInception.rows = (length(managers[,1]) - length(managers[,1][!is.na(managers[,
>

the overall length of the timeseries.

Next, we group the columns together. The first column, HAM1, contains the subject
of our analysis in the examples below. Columns two through six contain returns of other
managers using a similar investing style that might be considered substitutes – a “peer
group,” of sorts. Columns seven and eight contain key indexes. The EDHEC Long/Short
Equity index is a “peer index,” the S&P 500 Total Return index is an “asset-class index”.
We combine those into a set of “indexes” for later analysis. Column nine we skip for the
time being; column 10 we use as the risk free rate for each month.
Then we do the same thing for the rows of interest. We calculate the row numbers that
represent different trailing periods and keep those handy for doing comparative analyses.

4
2.3 Create charts and tables for presentation
Graphs and charts help to organize information visually. Our goals in creating these func-
tions were to simplify the process of creating well-formatted charts that are frequently used
for portfolio analysis and to create print-quality graphics that may be used in documents
for broader consumption. R’s graphics capabilities are substantial, but the simplicity of
the output of R’s default graphics functions such as plot does not always compare well
against graphics delivered with commercial asset or portfolio analysis software from places
such as MorningStar or PerTrac.

Color Palettes
We have set up some specific color palattes designed to create readable line and bar graphs
with specific objectives. We use this approach (rather than generating them on the fly) for
two reasons: first, there are fewer dependencies on libraries that don’t need to be called
dynamically; and second, to guarantee the color used for the n-th column of data. Figure
3 shows some examples of the different palates.
The first category of colorsets are designed to provide focus to the data graphed as
the first element, and include redfocus, bluefocus, and greenfocus. These palettes
are best used when there is an important data set for the viewer to focus on. The other
data provide some context, so they are graphed in diminishing values of gray. These were
generated with RColorBrewer, using the 8 level ”grays” palette and replacing the darkest
gray with the focus color. To coordinate these colorsets with the equal-weighted colors
below, replace the highlight color with the first color of the equal weighted palette from
below. This will coordinate charts with different purposes.
The second category is sets of equal-weighted colors. These colorsets are useful for
when all of the data should be observed and distinguishable on a line graph. The different
numbers in the name indicate the number of colors generated (six colors is probably the
maximum for a readable linegraph, but we provide as many as twelve). Examples include
rainbow12equal through rainbow4equal, in steps of two. These colorsets were gener-
ated with rainbow(12,s = 0.6,v = 0.75). The rich12equal and other corresponding
colorsets were generated with with package gplots function rich.colors(12). Simi-
larly tim12equal and similar colorsets were generated with with package fields func-
tion tim.colors(12), a function said to emulate the Matlab colorset. The dark8equal,
dark6equal, set8equal, and set6equal colorsets were created with package RColor-
Brewer, e.g., brewer.pal(8,"Dark2"). A third category is a set of monochrome colorsets,
including greenmono , bluemono, redmono, and gray8mono and gray6mono.
To see what these lists contain, just type the name.

> tim12equal

5
 [1] "#00008F" "#0000EA" "#0047FF" "#00A2FF" "#00FEFF" "#5AFFA5" "#B5FF4A"
[8] "#FFED00" "#FF9200" "#FF3700" "#DB0000" "#800000"

These are just lists of strings that contain the RGB codes of each color. You can easily
create your own if you have a particular palate that you like to use. Alternatively, you can
use the R default colors. For more information, see:
HTTP://research.stowers-institute.org/efg/R/Color/Chart/index.htm

Symbols
Similarly, there are a few sets of grouped symbols for scatter charts . These include
opensymbols, closedsymbols, fillsymbols, linesymbols, and allsymbols.

Legend locations
In the single charts the legend can be moved around on the plot. There are nine locations
that can be specified by keyword: ”bottomright”, ”bottom”, ”bottomleft”, ”left”, ”topleft”,
”top”, ”topright”, ”right” and ”center”. This places the legend on the inside of the plot frame
at the given location. Further information can be found in xy.coord. Most compound
charts have fixed legend locations.

Other Parameters
We have tried to leave access to all of the extensive list of parameters available in R’s
traditional graphics. For more information, see plot.default and par. In the example
above, we passed lwd the value of 2, which affects the line width. We might also alter the
line type or other parameter.

3 Create Charts and Tables

With that, we are ready to analyze the sample data set. This section starts with a set
of charts that provide a performance overview, some tables for presenting the data and
basic statistics, and then discusses ways to compare distributions, relative performance,
and downside risk.

3.1 Create performance charts

Figure 4 shows a three-panel performance summary chart and the code used to generate
it. The top chart is a normal cumulative return or wealth index chart that shows the
cumulative returns through time for each column. For data with later starting times,
set the parameter begin = "axis", which starts the wealth index of all columns at 1, or

6
 Figure 3: Examples of Color Palettes

default
1996−01−31 / 2006−12−31 redfocus
1996−01−31 / 2006−12−31

HAM1 HAM1
4 HAM2 4 HAM2
HAM3 HAM3
HAM4 HAM4
3 HAM5 3 HAM5
HAM6 HAM6
2 2

1 1

Jan Jul Jan Jul Jan Jan Jul Jan Jul Jan
1996 1998 2001 2003 2006 1996 1998 2001 2003 2006

rainbow6equal
1996−01−31 / 2006−12−31 tim6equal
1996−01−31 / 2006−12−31

HAM1 HAM1
4 HAM2 4 HAM2
HAM3 HAM3
HAM4 HAM4
3 HAM5 3 HAM5
HAM6 HAM6
2 2

1 1

Jan Jul Jan Jul Jan Jan Jul Jan Jul Jan
1996 1998 2001 2003 2006 1996 1998 2001 2003 2006

7
 Figure 4: Draw a Performance Summary Chart

> charts.PerformanceSummary(managers[,c(manager.col,indexes.cols)], colorset=rich6

HAM1 Performance

Cumulative Return 1996−01−31 / 2006−12−31

4.0
HAM1
EDHEC LS EQ
3.5 SP500 TR

3.0

2.5

2.0

1.5

Monthly Return
0.05
0.00
−0.05

Drawdown
−0.1
−0.2
−0.3
−0.4

Jan Jan Jan Jan Jan Jan Jan Jan Jan Jan Jan
1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006

8
begin = "first", which starts the wealth index of each column at the wealth index value
attained by the first column of data specified. The second of these settings, which is the
default, allows the reader to see how the two indexes would compare had they started at
the same time regardless of the starting period. In addition, the y-axis can be set to a
logarithmic value so that growth can be compared over long periods. This chart can be
generated independently using chart.CumReturns.
The second chart shows the individual monthly returns overlaid with a rolling measure
of tail risk referred to as Cornish Fisher Value-at-Risk (VaR) or Modified VaR. Alternative
risk measures, including standard deviation (specified as StdDev) and traditional Value-
at-Risk (VaR), can be specified using the method parameter. Note that StdDev and VaR are
symmetric calculations, so a high and low measure will be plotted. ModifiedVaR, on the
other hand, is asymmetric and only a lower bound is drawn. These risk calculations are
made on a rolling basis from inception, or can be calculated on a rolling window by setting
width to a value of the number of periods. These calculations should help the reader to
identify events or periods when estimates of tail risk may have changed suddenly, or to
help evaluate whether the assumptions underlying the calculation seem to hold . The risk
calculations can be generated for all of the columns provided by using the all parameter.
When set to TRUE, the function calculates risk lines for each column given and may help
the reader assess relative risk levels through time. This chart can be generated using
chart.BarVaR.
The third chart in the series is a drawdown or underwater chart, which shows the level
of losses from the last value of peak equity attained. Any time the cumulative returns
dips below the maximum cumulative returns, it’s a drawdown. This chart helps the reader
assess the synchronicity of the loss periods and their comparative severity. As you might
expect, this chart can also be created using chart.Drawdown.

3.2 Create a monthly returns table

Summary statistics are then the necessary aggregation and reduction of (potentially thou-
sands) of periodic return numbers. Usually these statistics are most palatable when or-
ganized into a table of related statistics, assembled for a particular purpose. A common
offering of past returns organized by month and accumulated by calendar year is usually
presented as a table, such as in table.CalendarReturns.
Figure 5 shows a table of returns formatted with years in rows, months in columns,
and a total column in the last column. For additional columns, the annual returns will
be appended as columns. Adding benchmarks or peers alongside the annualized data
is helpful for comparing returns across calendar years. Because there are a number of
columns in the example, we make the output easier to read by using the t function to
transpose the resulting data frame.

9
 Figure 5: Create a Table of Calendar Returns

> t(table.CalendarReturns(managers[,c(manager.col,indexes.cols)]))

1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006
Jan 0.7 2.1 0.6 -0.9 -1.0 0.8 1.4 -4.1 0.5 0.0 6.9
Feb 1.9 0.2 4.3 0.9 1.2 0.8 -1.2 -2.5 0.0 2.1 1.5
Mar 1.6 0.9 3.6 4.6 5.8 -1.1 0.6 3.6 0.9 -2.1 4.0
Apr -0.9 1.3 0.8 5.1 2.0 3.5 0.5 6.5 -0.4 -2.1 -0.1
May 0.8 4.4 -2.3 1.6 3.4 5.8 -0.2 3.4 0.8 0.4 -2.7
Jun -0.4 2.3 1.2 3.3 1.2 0.2 -2.4 3.1 2.6 1.6 2.2
Jul -2.3 1.5 -2.1 1.0 0.5 2.1 -7.5 1.8 0.0 0.9 -1.4
Aug 4.0 2.4 -9.4 -1.7 3.9 1.6 0.8 0.0 0.5 1.1 1.6
Sep 1.5 2.2 2.5 -0.4 0.1 -3.1 -5.8 0.9 0.9 2.6 0.7
Oct 2.9 -2.1 5.6 -0.1 -0.8 0.1 3.0 4.8 -0.1 -1.9 4.3
Nov 1.6 2.5 1.3 0.4 1.0 3.4 6.6 1.7 3.9 2.3 1.2
Dec 1.8 1.1 1.0 1.5 -0.7 6.8 -3.2 2.8 4.4 2.6 1.1
HAM1 13.6 20.4 6.1 16.1 17.7 22.4 -8.0 23.7 14.9 7.8 20.5
EDHEC LS EQ NA 21.4 14.6 31.4 12.0 -1.2 -6.4 19.3 8.6 11.3 11.7
SP500 TR 23.0 33.4 28.6 21.0 -9.1 -11.9 -22.1 28.7 10.9 4.9 15.8

10
 Figure 6: Create a Table of Statistics

> table.Stats(managers[,c(manager.col,peers.cols)])

HAM1 HAM2 HAM3 HAM4 HAM5 HAM6

Observations 132.0000 125.0000 132.0000 132.0000 77.0000 64.0000
NAs 0.0000 7.0000 0.0000 0.0000 55.0000 68.0000
Minimum -0.0944 -0.0371 -0.0718 -0.1759 -0.1320 -0.0404
Quartile 1 0.0000 -0.0098 -0.0054 -0.0198 -0.0164 -0.0016
Median 0.0112 0.0082 0.0102 0.0138 0.0038 0.0128
Arithmetic Mean 0.0111 0.0141 0.0124 0.0110 0.0041 0.0111
Geometric Mean 0.0108 0.0135 0.0118 0.0096 0.0031 0.0108
Quartile 3 0.0248 0.0252 0.0314 0.0460 0.0309 0.0255
Maximum 0.0692 0.1556 0.1796 0.1508 0.1747 0.0583
SE Mean 0.0022 0.0033 0.0032 0.0046 0.0052 0.0030
LCL Mean (0.95) 0.0067 0.0076 0.0062 0.0019 -0.0063 0.0051
UCL Mean (0.95) 0.0155 0.0206 0.0187 0.0202 0.0145 0.0170
Variance 0.0007 0.0013 0.0013 0.0028 0.0021 0.0006
Stdev 0.0256 0.0367 0.0365 0.0532 0.0457 0.0238
Skewness -0.6588 1.4580 0.7908 -0.4311 0.0738 -0.2800
Kurtosis 2.3616 2.3794 2.6829 0.8632 2.3143 -0.3489

3.3 Calculate monthly statistics

Likewise, the monthly returns statistics table in Figure 6 was created as a way to display
a set of related measures together for comparison across a set of instruments or funds. In
this example, we are looking at performance “from inception” for most of the managers,
so careful consideration needs to be given to missing data or unequal time series when
interpreting the results. Most people will prefer to see such statistics for common or
similar periods. Each of the individual functions can be called individually, as well.
When we started this project, we debated whether or not such tables would be broadly
useful or not. No reader is likely to think that we captured the precise statistics to help
their decision. We merely offer these as a starting point for creating your own. Add,
subtract, do whatever seems useful to you. If you think that your work may be useful
to others, please consider sharing it so that we may include it in a future version of this
library.

11
3.4 Compare distributions
For distributional analysis, a few graphics may be useful. The result of chart.Boxplot,
shown in Figure 7, is an example of a graphic that is difficult to create in Excel and is
under-utilized as a result. A boxplot of returns is, however, a very useful way to observe
the shape of large collections of asset returns in a manner that makes them easy to compare
to one another.
It is often valuable when evaluating an investment to know whether the instrument that
you are examining follows a normal distribution. One of the first methods to determine
how close the asset is to a normal or log-normal distribution is to visually look at your
data. Both chart.QQPlot and chart.Histogram will quickly give you a feel for whether
or not you are looking at a normally distributed return history. Figure 8 shows a histogram
generated for HAM1 with different display options.
Look back at the results generated by table.Stats. Differences between var and
SemiVariance will help you identify [fBasics]skewness in the returns. Skewness mea-
sures the degree of asymmetry in the return distribution. Positive skewness indicates that
more of the returns are positive, negative skewness indicates that more of the returns are
negative. An investor should in most cases prefer a positively skewed asset to a similar
(style, industry, region) asset that has a negative skewness. Kurtosis measures the con-
centration of the returns in any given part of the distribution (as you should see visually
in a histogram). The [fBasics]kurtosis function will by default return what is referred
to as “excess kurtosis”, where zero is a normal distribution, other methods of calculating
kurtosis than method="excess" will set the normal distribution at a value of 3. In general
a rational investor should prefer an asset with a low to negative excess kurtosis, as this will
indicate more predictable returns. If you find yourself needing to analyze the distribution
of complex or non-smooth asset distributions, the nortest package has several advanced
statistical tests for analyzing the normality of a distribution.

3.5 Show relative return and risk

Returns and risk may be annualized as a way to simplify comparison over longer time
periods. Although it requires a bit of estimating, such aggregation is popular because
it offers a reference point for easy comparison, such as in Figure 9. Examples are in
Return.annualized, StdDev.annualized, and SharpeRatio.annualized.
chart.Scatter is a utility scatter chart with some additional attributes that are used
in chart.RiskReturnScatter. Different risk parameters may be used. The parameter
method may be any of modVaR, VaR, or StdDev.
Additional information can be overlaid, as well. If add.sharpe is set to a value, say
c(1,2,3), the function overlays Sharpe ratio line that indicates Sharpe ratio levels of one
through three. Lines are drawn with a y-intercept of the risk free rate (rf) and the slope of

12
 Figure 7: Create a Boxplot

> chart.Boxplot(managers[ trailing36.rows, c(manager.col, peers.cols, indexes.cols

Trailing 36−Month Returns

HAM1 ● ●

HAM4 ●

HAM6 ●

SP500 TR ●

EDHEC LS EQ ●

HAM3 ● ●

HAM5 ●

HAM2 ● ●

−0.05 0.00 0.05

Return

13
 Figure 8: Create a Histogram of Returns

> layout(rbind(c(1,2),c(3,4)))
> chart.Histogram(managers[,1,drop=F], main = "Plain", methods = NULL)
> chart.Histogram(managers[,1,drop=F], main = "Density", breaks=40,
+ methods = c("add.density", "add.normal"))
> chart.Histogram(managers[,1,drop=F], main = "Skew and Kurt", methods = c
+ ("add.centered", "add.rug"))
> chart.Histogram(managers[,1,drop=F], main = "Risk Measures", methods = c
+ ("add.risk"))

Plain Density
30

30
Frequency

Density
20

20
10

5 10
5
0

−0.10 −0.05 0.00 0.05 −0.10 −0.05 0.00 0.05

Returns Returns

Skew and Kurt Risk Measures

95 % ModVaR
95% VaR
25

30
20

Frequency
Density

20
15
10

10
5

5
0

−0.10 −0.05 0.00 0.05 −0.10 −0.05 0.00 0.05

Returns Returns

14
 Figure 9: Show Relative Risk and Return

> chart.RiskReturnScatter(managers[trailing36.rows,1:8], Rf=.03/12, main = "Traili

Trailing 36−Month Performance

0.15

● HAM1

● HAM6 ● HAM4
Annualized Return

● EDHEC LS EQTR
● SP500
0.10

● HAM3
● HAM5

● HAM2
0.05
0.00

0.00 0.05 0.10 0.15

Annualized Risk

15
the appropriate Sharpe ratio level. Lines should be removed where not appropriate (e.g.,
sharpe.ratio = NULL). With a large number of assets (or columns), the names may get in
the way. To remove them, set add.names = NULL. A box plot may be added to the margins
to help identify the relative performance quartile by setting add.boxplots = TRUE.

3.6 Examine performance consistency

Rolling performance is typically used as a way to assess stability of a return stream. Al-
though perhaps it doesn’t get much credence in the financial literature because of it’s roots
in digital signal processing, many practitioners find rolling performance to be a useful way
to examine and segment performance and risk periods. See chart.RollingPerformance,
which is a way to display different metrics over rolling time periods.
Figure 10 shows three panels, the first for rolling returns, the second for rolling stan-
dard deviation, and the third for rolling Sharpe ratio. These three panels each call
chart.RollingPerformance with a different FUN argument, allowing any function to be
viewed over a rolling window.

3.7 Display relative performance

The function chart.RelativePerformance shows the ratio of the cumulative performance
for two assets at each point in time and makes periods of under- or out-performance easy
to see. The value of the chart is less important than the slope of the line. If the slope is
positive, the first asset (numerator) is outperforming the second, and vice versa. Figure
11 shows the returns of the manager in question relative to each member of the peer group
and the peer group index.
Looking at the data another way, we use the same chart to assess the peers individually
against the asset class index. Figure 12 shows the peer group members’ returns relative
to the S&P 500. Several questions might arise: Who beats the S&P? Can they do it
consistently? Are there cycles when they under-perform or outperform as a group? Which
manager has outperformed the most?

3.8 Measure relative performance to a benchmark

Identifying and using a benchmark can help us assess and explain how well we are meeting
our investment objectives, in terms of a widely held substitute. A benchmark can help us
explain how the portfolios are managed, assess the risk taken and the return desired, and
check that the objectives were respected. Benchmarks are used to get better control of
the investment management process and to suggest ways to improve selection.
Modern Portfolio Theory is a collection of tools and techniques by which a risk-averse
investor may construct an optimal portfolio. It encompasses the Capital Asset Pricing

16
 Figure 10: Examine Rolling Performance

> charts.RollingPerformance(managers[, c(manager.col, peers.cols, indexes.cols)],

Rolling 12 month Performance

Annualized Return 1996−01−31 / 2006−12−31

1.0

0.8

0.6

0.4

0.2

0.0

−0.2
Annualized Standard Deviation
0.30
0.25
0.20
0.15
0.10
0.05
Annualized Sharpe Ratio
6
4
2
0
−2

Jan Jan Jan Jan Jan Jan Jan Jan Jan Jan Jan
1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006

17
 Figure 11: Examine Relative Performance of Assets

> chart.RelativePerformance(managers[ , manager.col, drop = FALSE], managers[ , c(

Relative Performance 1996−01−31 / 2006−12−31

HAM1.HAM2
HAM1.HAM3
1.6 HAM1.HAM4
HAM1.HAM5
HAM1.HAM6
HAM1.EDHEC.LS.EQ

1.4

1.2

1.0

0.8

0.6

0.4

Jan Jan Jan Jan Jan Jan Jan Jan Jan Jan Jan
1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006

18
 Figure 12: Examine Performance Relative to a Benchmark

> chart.RelativePerformance(managers[ , c(manager.col, peers.cols) ], managers[, 8

Relative Performance 1996−01−31 / 2006−12−31

HAM1.SP500.TR
HAM2.SP500.TR
HAM3.SP500.TR
2.5 HAM4.SP500.TR
HAM5.SP500.TR
HAM6.SP500.TR

2.0

1.5

1.0

Jan Jan Jan Jan Jan Jan Jan Jan Jan Jan Jan
1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006

19
Model (CAPM), the efficient market hypothesis, and all forms of quantitative portfolio
construction and optimization. CAPM provides a justification for passive or index invest-
ing by positing that assets that are not on the efficient frontier will either rise or lower in
price until they are on the efficient frontier of the market portfolio.
The performance premium provided by an investment over a passive strategy (the
benchmark) is provided by ActivePremium, which is the investment’s annualized return
minus the benchmark’s annualized return. A closely related measure is the TrackingEr-
ror, which measures the unexplained portion of the investment’s performance relative to
a benchmark. The InformationRatio of an Investment in a MPT or CAPM framework
is the ActivePremium divided by the TrackingError. InformationRatio may be used
to rank investments in a relative fashion.
The code in Figure 13 creates a table of CAPM-related statistics that we can review
and compare across managers. Note that we focus on the trailing-36 month period. There
are, in addition to those listed, a wide variety of other CAPM-related metrics available.
The CAPM.RiskPremium on an investment is the measure of how much the asset’s perfor-
mance differs from the risk free rate. Negative Risk Premium generally indicates that the
investment is a bad investment, and the money should be allocated to the risk free asset
or to a different asset with a higher risk premium. CAPM.alpha is the degree to which the
assets returns are not due to the return that could be captured from the market. Con-
versely, CAPM.beta describes the portions of the returns of the asset that could be directly
attributed to the returns of a passive investment in the benchmark asset. The Capital
Market Line CAPM.CML relates the excess expected return on an efficient market portfolio
to its risk (represented in CAPM by StdDev). The slope of the CML, CAPM.CML.slope,
is the Sharpe Ratio for the market portfolio. The Security Market Line is constructed by
calculating the line of CAPM.RiskPremium over CAPM.beta. For the benchmark asset this
will be 1 over the risk premium of the benchmark asset. The slope of the SML, primarily
for plotting purposes, is given by CAPM.SML.slope. CAPM is a market equilibrium model
or a general equilibrium theory of the relation of prices to risk, but it is usually applied to
partial equilibrium portfolios which can create (sometimes serious) problems in valuation.
In a similar fashion to the rolling performance we displayed earlier, we can look at the
stability of a linear model’s parameters through time. Figure 14 shows a three panel chart
for the alpha, beta, and r-squared measures through time across a rolling window. Each
chart calls chart.RollingRegression with a different method parameter.
Likewise, we can assess whether the correlation between two time series is constant
through time. Figure 15 shows the rolling 12-month correlation between each of the peer
group and the S&P500. To look at the relationships over time and take a snapshot of the
statistical relevance of the measure, use table.Correlation, as shown in Figure 16.

20
 Figure 13: Create a Table of CAPM-Related Measures

> table.CAPM(managers[trailing36.rows, c(manager.col, peers.cols)],

+ managers[ trailing36.rows, 8, drop=FALSE],
+ Rf = managers[ trailing36.rows, Rf.col, drop=FALSE])

HAM1 to SP500 TR HAM2 to SP500 TR HAM3 to SP500 TR

Alpha 0.0051 0.0020 0.0020
Beta 0.6267 0.3223 0.6320
Beta+ 0.8227 0.4176 0.8240
Beta- 1.1218 -0.0483 0.8291
R-squared 0.3829 0.1073 0.4812
Annualized Alpha 0.0631 0.0247 0.0243
Correlation 0.6188 0.3276 0.6937
Correlation p-value 0.0001 0.0511 0.0000
Tracking Error 0.0604 0.0790 0.0517
Active Premium 0.0384 -0.0260 -0.0022
Information Ratio 0.6363 -0.3295 -0.0428
Treynor Ratio 0.1741 0.1437 0.1101
HAM4 to SP500 TR HAM5 to SP500 TR HAM6 to SP500 TR
Alpha 0.0009 0.0002 0.0022
Beta 1.1282 0.8755 0.8150
Beta+ 1.8430 1.0985 0.9993
Beta- 1.2223 0.5283 1.1320
R-squared 0.3444 0.5209 0.4757
Annualized Alpha 0.0109 0.0030 0.0271
Correlation 0.5868 0.7218 0.6897
Correlation p-value 0.0002 0.0000 0.0000
Tracking Error 0.1073 0.0583 0.0601
Active Premium 0.0154 -0.0077 0.0138
Information Ratio 0.1433 -0.1319 0.2296
Treynor Ratio 0.0768 0.0734 0.1045

21
 Figure 14: Create a Rolling Regression

> #source("PerformanceAnalytics/R/Return.excess.R")
> charts.RollingRegression(managers[, c(manager.col, peers.cols), drop = FALSE], m

Rolling 12−month Regressions

Alpha 1996−01−31 / 2006−12−31

0.8

0.6

0.4

0.2

0.0
Beta
1.0
0.5
0.0
R−Squared
0.8
0.6
0.4
0.2

Jan Jan Jan Jan Jan Jan Jan Jan Jan Jan Jan
1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006

22
 Figure 15: Chart the Rolling Correlation

> chart.RollingCorrelation(managers[,c(manager.col, peers.cols)], managers[, 8, dr

12−Month Rolling Correlation 1996−01−31 / 2006−12−31

0.5

0.0

−0.5

Jan Jan Jan Jan Jan Jan Jan Jan Jan Jan Jan
1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006

23
 Figure 16: Calculate Correlations

> table.Correlation(managers[, c(manager.col, peers.cols)], managers[, 8,

+ drop = F], legend.loc = "lowerleft")

Correlation p-value Lower CI Upper CI

HAM1 to SP500 TR 0.6600671 7.397842e-18 0.55138376 0.7467191
HAM2 to SP500 TR 0.4128282 1.715350e-06 0.25576240 0.5486602
HAM3 to SP500 TR 0.6608633 6.545409e-18 0.55236590 0.7473433
HAM4 to SP500 TR 0.5601846 2.870109e-12 0.43052170 0.6671932
HAM5 to SP500 TR 0.2844487 1.216830e-02 0.06458459 0.4779755
HAM6 to SP500 TR 0.5091542 1.735968e-05 0.30101889 0.6709863

3.9 Calculate Downside Risk

Many assets, including hedge funds, commodities, options, and even most common stocks
over a sufficiently long period, do not follow a normal distribution. For such common
but non-normally distributed assets, a more sophisticated approach than standard devia-
tion/volatility is required to adequately model the risk.
Markowitz, in his Nobel acceptance speech and in several papers, proposed that Semi-
Variance would be a better measure of risk than variance. This measure is also called
SemiDeviation. The more general case of downside deviation is implemented in the func-
tion DownsideDeviation, as proposed by Sortino and Price (1994), where the minimum
acceptable return (MAR) is a parameter to the function. It is interesting to note that
variance and mean return can produce a smoothly elliptical efficient frontier for portfolio
optimization utilizing [quadprog]solve.QP or [tseries]portfolio.optim or [fPort-
folio]MarkowitzPortfolio. Use of semivariance or many other risk measures will not
necessarily create a smooth ellipse, causing significant additional difficulties for the port-
folio manager trying to build an optimal portfolio. We’ll leave a more complete treatment
and implementation of portfolio optimization techniques for another time.
Another very widely used downside risk measures is analysis of drawdowns, or loss
from peak value achieved. The simplest method is to check the maxDrawdown, as this will
tell you the worst cumulative loss ever sustained by the asset. If you want to look at
all the drawdowns, you can use table.Drawdowns to find and sort them in order from
worst/major to smallest/minor, as shown in Figure 18.
The UpDownRatios function may give you some insight into the impacts of the skewness
and kurtosis of the returns, and letting you know how length and magnitude of up or down
moves compare to each other. Or, as mentioned above, you can also plot drawdowns with
chart.Drawdown.

24
 Figure 17: Create a Table of Downside Statistics

> table.DownsideRisk(managers[,1:6],Rf=.03/12)

HAM1 HAM2 HAM3 HAM4 HAM5 HAM6

Semi Deviation 0.0191 0.0201 0.0237 0.0395 0.0324 0.0175
Gain Deviation 0.0169 0.0347 0.0290 0.0311 0.0313 0.0149
Loss Deviation 0.0211 0.0107 0.0191 0.0365 0.0324 0.0128
Downside Deviation (MAR=10%) 0.0178 0.0164 0.0214 0.0381 0.0347 0.0161
Downside Deviation (Rf=3%) 0.0154 0.0129 0.0185 0.0353 0.0316 0.0133
Downside Deviation (0%) 0.0145 0.0116 0.0174 0.0341 0.0304 0.0121
Maximum Drawdown 0.1518 0.2399 0.2894 0.2874 0.3405 0.0788
Historical VaR (95%) -0.0258 -0.0294 -0.0425 -0.0799 -0.0733 -0.0341
Historical ES (95%) -0.0513 -0.0331 -0.0555 -0.1122 -0.1023 -0.0392
Modified VaR (95%) -0.0342 -0.0276 -0.0368 -0.0815 -0.0676 -0.0298
Modified ES (95%) -0.0610 -0.0614 -0.0440 -0.1176 -0.0974 -0.0390

Figure 18: Create a Table of Sorted Drawdowns

> table.Drawdowns(managers[,1,drop=F])

From Trough To Depth Length To Trough Recovery

1 2002-02-28 2003-02-28 2003-07-31 -0.1518 18 13 5
2 1998-05-31 1998-08-31 1999-03-31 -0.1239 11 4 7
3 2005-03-31 2005-04-30 2005-09-30 -0.0412 7 2 5
4 2001-09-30 2001-09-30 2001-11-30 -0.0312 3 1 2
5 1996-04-30 1996-07-31 1996-08-31 -0.0284 5 4 1

25
4 Conclusion
With that short overview of a few of the capabilities provided by PerformanceAnalytics,
we hope that the accompanying package and documentation will partially fill a hole in the
tools available to a financial engineer or analyst. If you think there’s an important gap or
possible improvement to be made, please don’t hesitate to contact us.

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