Stocker can be run from an interative Python 3.6 session. I recommend installing the Anaconda Python 3.6 distribution and using a Jupyter Notebook.

Stocker is a work in progress. Let me know of any issues and feel free to make your own contributions!

Python 3.6 and the following packages are required:

quandl 3.3.0
matplotlib 2.1.1
numpy 1.14.0
fbprophet 0.2.1
pystan 2.17.0.0
pandas 0.22.0
pytrends 4.3.0

These can be installed with pip from the command line (some of these might require running the command prompt as administrator).

pip install -U quandl numpy pandas fbprophet matplotlib pytrends pystan

If pip does not work and you have the Anaconda distribution, try installing with conda:

conda install quandl numpy pandas matplotlib pystan

conda update quandl numpy pandas matplotlib pystan

pytrends and fbprophet can only be installed with pip. If you run into any other errors installing packages, check out Stack Overflow

You may try conda install -c conda-forge fbprophet to install with conda.

Once the required packages have been installed, get started exploring a stock by running an interactive python session or Jupyter Notebook in the same folder as stocker.py.

Import the stocker class by running

from stocker import Stocker

Instantiate a stocker object by calling Stocker with a valid stock ticker. Stocker uses the WIKI database on Quandl by default and a list of all 3100 tickers in this database can be found at data/stock_list.csv. If using one of the tickers in the list, only the ticker symbol needs to be passed. If using a stock not on the list, try using a different exchange:

# MSFT is in the WIKI database, which is default
microsoft = Stocker(ticker='MSFT')

# TECHM is in the NSE database
techm = Stocker(ticker='TECHM', exchange='NSE')

If succesful, you will recieve a message with the date range of data:

MSFT Stocker Initialized. Data covers 1986-03-13 to 2018-01-12.

The Stocker object includes 8 main methods for analyzing and predicting stock prices. Call any of the following on your stocker object, replacing Stocker with your object (for example microsoft):

Stocker.plot_stock(start_date=None, end_date=None, stats=['Adj. Close'], plot_type='basic') ​ Prints basic info for the specified stats and plots the history for the stats over the specified date range. The default stat is Adjusted Closing price and default start and end dates are the beginning and ending dates of the data. plot_type can be either basic, to plot the actual values on the y-axis, or pct to plot percentage change from the average.

model, future = Stocker.create_prophet_model(days=0, resample=False)

The number of training years for any Prophet model can be set with the Stocker.training_years attribute. The default number of training years is 3.

Make a Prophet Additive Model using the specified number of training years and make predictions number of days into the future. If days > 0, prints the predicted price. Also plots the historical data with the predictions and uncertainty overlaid. Returns the prophet model, and the future dataframe which can be used for plotting components of the time series.

To see the trends and patterns of the prophet model, call

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt model.plot_components(future) plt.show()

Stocker.changepoint_date_analysis(search=None)

Finds the most significant changepoints in the dataset from a prophet model trained using the assigned years of training data. The changepoints represent where the change in the rate of change of the data is the greatest in either the negative or positive direction. The changepoints occur where the change in the rate of the time series is greatest. This method prints the 5 most significant changepoints ranked by the change in the rate and plots the 10 most significant overlaid on top of the stock price data. The changepoints only come from the first 80% of the training data in a Prophet model.

A special bonus feature of this method is a Google Search Trends analysis. If a search term is passed to the method, the method retrieves the Google Search Frequency for the specified term and plots on the same graph as the changepoints and the stock price data. It also displays related search queries and related rising search queires. If no term is specified then this capability is not used. You can use this to determine if the stock price is correlated to certain search terms or if the changepoints coincide with an increase in particular searches.

Stocker.buy_and_hold(start_date=None, end_date=None, nshares=1)

Evaluates a buy and hold strategy from the start date to the end date with the specified number of shares. If no start date and end date are specified, these default to the start and end date of the data. The buy and hold strategy means buying the stock on the start date and holding to the end date when we sell the stock. Prints the expected profit and plots the profit over time. Recommended for those planning a trip back in time to maximize profits.

Stocker.changepoint_prior_analysis(changepoint_priors=[0.001, 0.05, 0.1, 0.2], olors=['b', 'r', 'grey', 'gold'])

Makes a prophet model with each of the specified changepoint prior scales (cps). The cps controls the amount of overfitting in the model: a higher cps means a more flexible model which can lead to overfitting the training data (more variance), and a lower cps leads to less flexibility and the possiblity of underfitting (high bias). Each model is fit with the assigned number of years of data and makes predictions for 6 months. Output is a graph showing the original observations, with the predictions from each model and the associated uncertainty.

The cps is an attribute of a stocker object and can be changed using Stocker.changepoint_prior_scale The default value for the cps is 0.05 which tends to be low for fitting stock data.

Altering the changepoint prior scale can have a significant effect on predictions, so try a few different values to see how they affect the model.

Stocker.changepoint_prior_validation(self, start_date=None, end_date=None, ​ changepoint_priors = [0.001, 0.05, 0.1, 0.2])

Quantifies the differences in performance on a validation set of the specified cps values. A model is created with each changepoint prior, trained on the assigned number of training years prior to the test period and evaluated on the range passed to the method. The default validation period is from two years before the end of the data to one year before the end of the data. The average error on the training and testing data for each prior is calculated and displayed as well as the average uncertainty (range) of the data for both the training and testing sets. The average error is the mean of the absolute difference between the prediction and the correct value in dollars. The uncertainty is the upper estimate minus the lower estimate in dollars. A graph of these results is also produced. This method is useful for choosing a proper cps in combination with the graphical results.

Stocker.evaluate_prediction(start_date=None, end_date=None, nshares=1000)

Evalutes a trading strategy informed by the prophet model between the specified start and end date. The start and end date for the evaluation should be different than the start and end date used for validation the prior otherwise you could end up overfitting the test set. The model is trained on the assigned number of years of data prior to the test period and makes predictions for the specified date range. The default evaluation range is the last year of the data. Numerical performance metrics are computed using the predictions and known test set values. These are: average absolute error on the testing and training data, percentage of time the model predicted the correct direction for the stock, and the percentage of the time the actual value was within the 80% confidence interval for the prediction. A graph shows the predictions with uncertainty and the actual values. The final actual and predicted prices are also displayed.

If number of shares is passed to the method, we get to play the stock market over the testing period with the specified number of shares. We compare the strategy informed by the Prophet model with a simple buy and hold approach.

The strategy from the model states that for a given day, we buy a stock if the model predicts it will increase. If the model predicts a decrease, we do not play the market on that day. Our earnings, if we bought the stock, will be the change in the price of the stock over that day multiplied by the number of shares. Therefore, if we predict the stock will go up and the price does go up, we will make the change in price times the number of shares. If the price goes down, we lose the change in price times the number of shares.

Printed output is the final predicted price, the final actual price, the profit from the model strategy, and the profit from a buy and hold strategy over the same period. A graph of the expected profit from both strategies over time is displayed.

Stocker.predict_future(days=30)

Makes a prediction for the specified number of days in the future using a prophet model trained on the assigned number of years of data. Printed output is the days on which the stock is expected to increase and the days when it is expected to decrease. A graph also shows these results with confidence intervals for the prediction. ​