Portfolio returns during the crisis

The first step in quantifying the effects of uncertainty on a financial portfolio is to examine the portfolio's return. You'll consider a portfolio of four investment bank stocks, which were both instigators and victims of the global financial crisis.

The banks are Citibank, Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan, and Morgan Stanley. Closing stock prices for the period 2005 - 2010 are in the available portfolio DataFrame. You'll use this to examine the dramatic price changes during the depths of the crisis, 2008 - 2009. You'll also see how volatile the resulting portfolio_returns were, assuming an equal-weighted portfolio with weights stored in the weights list.

In this and in all future exercises, numpy, pandas and matplotlib.pyplot are available as np, pd, and plt respectively.

Create a subset of the portfolio DataFrame time series for the period 2008-2009 using .loc[], and place in asset_prices.
Plot the asset_prices during this time.

Remember that you can examine the portfolio DataFrame directly in the console.

Exercise

Portfolio returns during the crisis

Instructions 1/2