Building a Powerful Portfolio Management System in Python: A Step-by-Step Guide with Code Examples

Jeremy Johnson
2 min readJan 19, 2023
Photo by David Clode on Unsplash

Creating a portfolio management system can be a valuable tool for investors, traders and fund managers to keep track of their investments and performance. In this blog post, we will be discussing the process of creating a portfolio management system in Python, including the necessary code and steps required.

Before we begin, it’s important to note that creating a portfolio management system requires knowledge of Python and the ability to work with financial data.

The first step in creating a portfolio management system is to gather the financial data that will be used to track the investments. This data can include stock prices, dividends, and other financial metrics. The data can be obtained from various sources such as Yahoo Finance, Alpha Vantage or FRED.

Once the data is obtained, it can be imported and cleaned using Python’s Pandas library. Here’s an example of how to import and clean the data using Pandas:

import pandas as pd
# import data
data = pd.read_csv("stock_data.csv")
# clean data
data.dropna(inplace=True)
data.set_index("Date", inplace=True)

Next, we can create a portfolio object that will keep track of the investments and performance. This object can be created using a class in Python and can include methods for adding and removing investments, calculating the performance, and displaying the portfolio’s holdings. Here’s an example of a basic portfolio class:

class Portfolio:
def __init__(self):
self.holdings = {}
def add_investment(self, symbol, shares):
if symbol in self.holdings:
self.holdings[symbol] += shares
else:
self.holdings[symbol] = shares
def remove_investment(self, symbol, shares):
if symbol in self.holdings:
self.holdings[symbol] -= shares
if self.holdings[symbol] == 0:
del self.holdings[symbol]
def calculate_performance(self):
pass
def display_holdings(self):
for symbol, shares in self.holdings.items():
print(f"{symbol}: {shares} shares")

It’s important to note that the example above is not complete, and it’s missing some important features like fetching the current price of the stock, calculating the performance and return and adding some validation to the methods like making sure the shares are positive numbers.

To calculate the performance, you can use the data obtained earlier, and use it to calculate metrics such as return, volatility, and sharpe ratio.

In conclusion, creating a portfolio management system in Python requires knowledge of Python, financial data and the ability to work with it. By gathering the data, cleaning it, creating a portfolio class, and calculating performance metrics, you can create a powerful tool for tracking investments and performance.

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Jeremy Johnson

Jeremy Johnson is a Senior Software Engineer with over 14 years of experience in the industry. Skilled in Angular JS, Java, and Python.