Have they traded?

Hi Simon - Both algorithms have a status of "Live Trading". Is there an additional step I need to take?

I mean, have they placed any trades? This sounds like a bug in your algorithm...

It may very well be the case, but I'm not sure how to check. I'm referring to the "Sample Mean Reversion Algorithm" if that helps...

Sorry I am not familiar with all the examples and whatnot, but if the algo has not placed any trades, it starts to reason that its performance is 0%.

Thanks Simon. Have included the code below. Would you mind terrible to have a look if anything is amiss?

# 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 15% of stocks with the WORST returns over the past 5 days.  
# We go short the top 15% 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 0.5% of stocks defined by average daily trading volume.  
    set_universe(universe.DollarVolumeUniverse(99.5, 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_commission(commission.PerShare(cost=0.0075, min_trade_cost=1.00))  
    # 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 = 1.0  
    context.short_leverage = -1.0  
    context.lower_percentile = 15  
    context.upper_percentile = 85  
    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 15%, upper percentile is for the top 15%.  
    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]))

Sorry, I don't really have time to examine examples for bugs. Good luck.

This is your original code with some instrumentation added, for the default time range, at $100k.

By watching PvR you can give yourself a significant advantage. (see Source) Using PvR I was able to pull 12.8 times more profit from your code. I'm now paper trading this.

If by "Paper Trading", you mean "Live Trading" in the contest, then you won't trade anything until this upcoming Monday, due to the line:

   # 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))  

Change it to dailly trading with something like:
schedule_function(rebalance, date_rules.every_day(), time_rules.market_close(hours=2, minutes=15)) Also, when you submit to the contest, you may not see anything on the leaderboard for a couple of days due to Qtop infrastructure delays.
alan

No problem Simon. Thanks for the assistance.

Thanks Garyha - Using PvR definitely makes all the difference, but the coding is way out of my league. Nevertheless - A luta continua!

Hi Bevan,

Alan's comment explains why your algo has not yet placed any trades. The schedule function is set to only trade at the first trading day of each week in that example. If you would like to see any transactions that your live algo has made, you can go to the live algo dashboard and look at the "Orders and Fills" table for recent orders.

PvR code can usually be dropped in with a single paste as the one continuous chunk below at the end of initialize().

    schedule_function(info, date_rules.every_day(), time_rules.market_close())  
    c = context  
    c.cash_low = c.portfolio.starting_cash  
    c.max_lvrg = 0  
    c.max_shrt = 0  
    c.risk_hi  = 0  
    c.date_prv = ''  
    c.date_end = str(get_environment('end').date())  
    print '{} to {}  {}'.format(str(get_datetime().date()) , c.date_end, int(c.cash_low))

def info(context, data):  
    ''' Custom chart and/or log of profit_vs_risk returns and related information  
    '''  
    # # # # # # # # # #  Options  # # # # # # # # # #  
    record_max_lvrg = 1          # Maximum leverage encountered  
    record_leverage = 0          # Leverage (context.account.leverage)  
    record_q_return = 0          # Quantopian returns (percentage)  
    record_pvr      = 1          # Profit vs Risk returns (percentage)  
    record_pnl      = 0          # Profit-n-Loss  
    record_shorting = 1          # Total value of any shorts  
    record_risk     = 0          # Risked, maximum cash spent or shorts in excess of cash at any time  
    record_risk_hi  = 1          # Highest risk overall  
    record_cash     = 0          # Cash available  
    record_cash_low = 1          # Any new lowest cash level  
    logging         = 1          # Also log to the logging window conditionally (1) or not (0)  
    log_method      = 'risk_hi'  # 'daily' or 'risk_hi'

    c = context                          # For brevity  
    new_cash_low = 0                     # To trigger logging in cash_low case  
    date = str(get_datetime().date())    # To trigger logging in daily case  
    cash = c.portfolio.cash

    if int(cash) < c.cash_low:    # New cash low  
        new_cash_low = 1  
        c.cash_low   = int(cash)  
        if record_cash_low:  
            record(CashLow = int(c.cash_low))

    pvr_rtrn      = 0        # Profit vs Risk returns based on maximum spent  
    q_rtrn        = 0        # Returns by Quantopian  
    profit_loss   = 0        # Profit-n-loss  
    shorts        = 0        # Shorts value  
    start         = c.portfolio.starting_cash  
    cash_dip      = int(max(0, start - cash))

    if record_cash:  
        record(cash = int(c.portfolio.cash))  # Cash

    if record_leverage:  
        record(Lvrg = c.account.leverage)     # Leverage

    if record_max_lvrg:  
        if c.account.leverage > c.max_lvrg:  
            c.max_lvrg = c.account.leverage  
            record(MaxLvrg = c.max_lvrg)      # Maximum leverage

    if record_pnl:  
        profit_loss = c.portfolio.pnl  
        record(PnL = profit_loss)             # "Profit and Loss" in dollars

    for p in c.portfolio.positions:  
        shrs = c.portfolio.positions[p].amount  
        if shrs < 0:  
            shorts += int(abs(shrs * data[p].price))

    if record_shorting:  
        record(Shorts = shorts)               # Shorts value as a positve

    # Shorts in excess of cash to cover them, a positive value  
    shorts_excess = int(shorts - cash) if shorts > cash else 0  
    c.max_shrt    = int(max(c.max_shrt, shorts_excess))

    risk = int(max(cash_dip, shorts_excess, shorts))  
    if record_risk:  
        record(Risk = risk)                   # Amount in play, maximum of shorts or cash used

    new_risk_hi = 0  
    if risk > c.risk_hi:  
        c.risk_hi = risk  
        new_risk_hi = 1

        if record_risk_hi:  
            record(RiskHi = c.risk_hi)       # Highest risk overall

    if record_pvr:      # Profit_vs_Risk returns based on max amount actually spent (risk high)  
        if c.risk_hi != 0:     # Avoid zero-divide  
            pvr_rtrn = 100 * (c.portfolio.portfolio_value - start) / c.risk_hi  
            record(PvR = pvr_rtrn)            # Profit_vs_Risk returns

    if record_q_return:  
        q_rtrn = 100 * (c.portfolio.portfolio_value - start) / start  
        record(QRet = q_rtrn)                 # Quantopian returns to compare to pvr returns curve

    from pytz import timezone  
    if logging:  
        if log_method == 'risk_hi' and new_risk_hi \  
          or log_method == 'daily' and c.date_prv != date \  
          or c.date_end == date \  
          or new_cash_low:  
            qret   = 'QRet '    + '%.1f' % q_rtrn  
            mxlv   = 'MaxLv '   + '%.1f' % c.max_lvrg   if record_max_lvrg else ''  
            pvr    = 'PvR_Ret ' + '%.1f' % pvr_rtrn     if record_pvr      else ''  
            pnl    = 'PnL '     + '%.0f' % profit_loss  if record_pnl      else ''  
            csh    = 'Cash '    + '%.0f' % cash         if record_cash     else ''  
            csh_lw = 'CshLw '   + '%.0f' % c.cash_low   if record_cash_low else ''  
            shrt   = 'Shrt '    + '%.0f' % shorts       if record_shorting else ''  
            risk   = 'Risk '    + '%.0f' % risk         if record_risk     else ''  
            rsk_hi = 'RskHi '   + '%.0f' % c.risk_hi    if record_risk_hi  else ''  
            minute = get_datetime().astimezone(timezone('US/Eastern')).time().minute  
            log.info('{} {} {} {} {} {} {} {} {} {}'.format(  
                    minute, mxlv, qret, pvr, pnl, csh, csh_lw, shrt, risk, rsk_hi))

    if c.date_end == date:    # Log on last day, like cash 125199  portfolio 126890  
        log.info('cash {}  portfolio {}'.format(  
                int(cash), int(c.portfolio.portfolio_value)))

    c.date_prv = date  

Everybody: Change that schedule_function() to match whatever schedule you're running (and last), or comment it and instead run info(context, data) maybe inside handle_data(). The key is that it needs to pick up the maximum amount of cash transacted for stocks (the amount you would need to supply to the account to achieve that result, for all practical purposes always higher or lower than starting capital).

Maybe I ought to put out a far more commented, explained version of that. If so, somebody let me know.