Determining closing price

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Determining closing price

posted Feb 17, 2018

Hi all,

Does this command " close_price = USEquityPricing.close.latest" set close_price to the 1D close? Or just the latest price depending on the time frame?

Thanks,
Dee

2 responses

One can think of the statement "close_price = USEquityPricing.close.latest" as setting "close_price" to the latest price depending on the time frame. However, "close_price" will be a factor object and NOT a scaler value. One can't say "print close_price" and expect a number. It's not the real value of the close price. It's just used to define the pipeline and the associated data.

Specifically, "USEquityPricing" is a dataset, ".close" is a column in that dataset, and ".latest" is a method which returns the latest value of that column. Technically, a dataset isn't really the actual data. DataSets are simply objects that tell the Pipeline API where and how to find the data. The above statement is used to initially define the pipeline output. See the documentation https://www.quantopian.com/help#importing-datasets for a complete description.

So, when the pipeline is run (using the "pipeline_output" method in an algorithm or the "run_pipeline" method in a notebook) then and only then is the actual scaler data retrieved. The output is a Pandas dataframe indexed by security with the columns one has defined. By initially adding "close_price" to a pipeline, one of the columns in the dataframe will now contain the latest close price of an asset based upon the day the pipeline is run.

Hope that makes sense?

Dan, your explanation has helped me tremendously. Thank you!

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The material on this website is provided for informational purposes only and does not constitute an offer to sell, a solicitation to buy, or a recommendation or endorsement for any security or strategy, nor does it constitute an offer to provide investment advisory services by Quantopian.

In addition, the material offers no opinion with respect to the suitability of any security or specific investment. No information contained herein should be regarded as a suggestion to engage in or refrain from any investment-related course of action as none of Quantopian nor any of its affiliates is undertaking to provide investment advice, act as an adviser to any plan or entity subject to the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974, as amended, individual retirement account or individual retirement annuity, or give advice in a fiduciary capacity with respect to the materials presented herein. If you are an individual retirement or other investor, contact your financial advisor or other fiduciary unrelated to Quantopian about whether any given investment idea, strategy, product or service described herein may be appropriate for your circumstances. All investments involve risk, including loss of principal. Quantopian makes no guarantees as to the accuracy or completeness of the views expressed in the website. The views are subject to change, and may have become unreliable for various reasons, including changes in market conditions or economic circumstances.