Help explaining the Sample Mean Reversion Algo?

The code (below) is the sample mean reversion algo. Can someone how the slippage, long/short_leverage, long/short percentile, look back affect the algorithm, as well as, give broad strokes as to how this algo operates?

# This is a sample mean-reversion algorithm on Quantopian for you to test and adapt.

# Algorithm investment thesis:
# Top-performing stocks from last week will do worse this week, and vice-versa.

# Every Monday, we rank high-volume stocks based on their previous 5 day returns.
# We go long the bottom 20% of stocks with the WORST returns over the past 5 days.
# We go short the top 20% of stocks with the BEST returns over the past 5 days.

# This type of algorithm may be used in live trading and in the Quantopian Open.

# Import the libraries we will use here
import numpy as np

# The initialize function is the place to set your tradable universe and define any parameters.
def initialize(context):
# Use the top 1% of stocks defined by average daily trading volume.
set_universe(universe.DollarVolumeUniverse(99, 100))
# Set execution cost assumptions. For live trading with Interactive Brokers
# we will assume a $1.00 minimum per trade fee, with a per share cost of$0.0075.
# Set market impact assumptions. We limit the simulation to
# trade up to 2.5% of the traded volume for any one minute,
# and  our price impact constant is 0.1.
set_slippage(slippage.VolumeShareSlippage(volume_limit=0.025, price_impact=0.10))
# Define the other variables
context.long_leverage = 0.5
context.short_leverage = -0.5
context.lower_percentile = 20
context.upper_percentile = 80
context.returns_lookback = 5
# Rebalance every Monday (or the first trading day if it's a holiday).
# At 11AM ET, which is 1 hour and 30 minutes after market open.
schedule_function(rebalance,
date_rules.week_start(days_offset=0),
time_rules.market_open(hours = 1, minutes = 30))

# The handle_data function is run every bar.
def handle_data(context,data):
# Record and plot the leverage of our portfolio over time.
record(leverage = context.account.leverage)

# We also want to monitor the number of long and short positions
# in our portfolio over time. This loop will check our positition sizes
# and add the count of longs and shorts to our plot.
longs = shorts = 0
for position in context.portfolio.positions.itervalues():
if position.amount > 0:
longs += 1
if position.amount < 0:
shorts += 1
record(long_count=longs, short_count=shorts)

# This rebalancing is called according to our schedule_function settings.
def rebalance(context,data):
# Get the last N days of prices for every stock in our universe.
prices = history(context.returns_lookback, '1d', 'price')
# Calculate the past 5 days' returns for each security.
returns = (prices.iloc[-1] - prices.iloc[0]) / prices.iloc[0]
# Remove stocks with missing prices.
# Remove any stocks we ordered last time that still have open orders.
# Get the cutoff return percentiles for the long and short portfolios.
returns = returns.dropna()
open_orders = get_open_orders()
if open_orders:
eligible_secs = [sec for sec in data if sec not in open_orders]
returns = returns[eligible_secs]

# Lower percentile is the threshhold for the bottom 20%, upper percentile is for the top 20%.
lower, upper = np.percentile(returns, [context.lower_percentile,
context.upper_percentile])
# Select the X% worst performing securities to go long.
long_secs = returns[returns <= lower]
# Select the Y% best performing securities to short.
short_secs = returns[returns >= upper]
# Set the allocations to even weights in each portfolio.
long_weight = context.long_leverage / len(long_secs)
short_weight = context.short_leverage / len(short_secs)
for security in data:
# Buy/rebalance securities in the long leg of our portfolio.
if security in long_secs:
order_target_percent(security, long_weight)
# Sell/rebalance securities in the short leg of our portfolio.
elif security in short_secs:
order_target_percent(security, short_weight)
# Close any positions that fell out of the list of securities to long or short.
else:
order_target(security, 0)
log.info("This week's longs: "+", ".join([long_.symbol for long_ in long_secs.index]))
log.info("This week's shorts: "  +", ".join([short_.symbol for short_ in short_secs.index]))

1 response

The comments try to explain, in broad strokes, how the algorithm works. Do you have any specific questions about what's going on?

Slippage essentially defines how your algorithm impacts the price of the security: the idea is that by being an actor in the market, you will have a small impact on prices depending on how you buy or sell. Please read the documentation if you need further help with slippage.