Comparing portfolio performance to a benchmark

A benchmark is just a well-established point of reference. In the world of investments, that is usually the S&P 500 Index, which is reflected in the SPY ETF. So, let’s find out how our portfolio compares.

If we pick up the previously useful yfinance module, we can retrieve some price history on SPY with just one line of code.

benchmarkTicker = "SPY"
data = yf.download(benchmarkTicker, group_by="Ticker", period="5y")
data

You’ll get an output that looks similar to this:

Open  High  Low  Close  Adj Close  Volume
Date
2017-12-01  264.760010  265.309998  260.760010  264.459991  242.683990  164390900
2017-12-04  266.309998  266.799988  264.079987  264.140015  242.390366  94040600
2017-12-05  263.190002 ...