[REVIEW]: Backtest Graphics

[whedon]

Submitting author: @karantibrewal (Karan Tibrewal)
Repository: https://github.com/knightsay/backtestGraphics
Version: v1.0.0
Editor: @arfon
Reviewer: @joshuaulrich

Status

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Reviewer questions

Conflict of interest

• As the reviewer I confirm that there are no conflicts of interest for me to review this work (such as being a major contributor to the software).

General checks

• Repository: Is the source code for this software available at the repository url?
• License: Does the repository contain a plain-text LICENSE file with the contents of an OSI approved software license?
• Version: Does the release version given match the GitHub release (v1.0.0)?

Functionality

• Installation: Does installation proceed as outlined in the documentation?
• Functionality: Have the functional claims of the software been confirmed?
• Performance: Have any performance claims of the software been confirmed?

Documentation

• A statement of need: Do the authors clearly state what problems the software is designed to solve and who the target audience is?
• Installation instructions: Is there a clearly-stated list of dependencies? Ideally these should be handled with an automated package management solution.
• Example usage: Do the authors include examples of how to use the software (ideally to solve real-world analysis problems).
• Functionality documentation: Is the core functionality of the software documented to a satisfactory level (e.g. API method documentation)?
• Automated tests: Are there automated tests or manual steps described so that the function of the software can be verified?
• Community guidelines: Are there clear guidelines for third parties wishing to 1) Contribute to the software 2) Report issues or problems with the software 3) Seek support

Software paper

Paper PDF: 10.21105.joss.00030.pdf

• Authors: Does the paper.md file include a list of authors with their affiliations?
• A statement of need: Do the authors clearly state what problems the software is designed to solve and who the target audience is?
• References: Do all archival references that should have a DOI list one (e.g. papers, datasets, software)?

[arfon]

@karantibrewal - thanks for submitting this. I have a couple of questions/comments before we can proceed with this submission:

• Please update your paper.md metadata. It still has me listed as an author
• Isn't not obvious to me that this software has a research application. Could you please explain what areas of research this software is designed to serve?

[karantibrewal]

Hi Arfon,

Thank you for your email. To address your points:

1. Sorry about that. I've made the changes, and also included a paper.json
   file.
2. Although our package doesn't solve a research question directly, we have
   designed it to help as a tool for others in visualization of financial
   data. Recently, we presented the package to the RFinance Conference, and
   received great feedback on how our package can be directly used by several
   in their research. Another advantage is that the package can be modified to
   support visualization of any time series data (doesn't have to be finance),
   according to the user's preference.

I hope that answers your question. Please let me know if you need anything
else.

Thanks again,
Karan

On Mon, Jun 20, 2016 at 7:23 PM, Arfon Smith notifications@github.com
wrote:

@karantibrewal https://github.com/karantibrewal - thanks for submitting
this. I have a couple of questions/comments before we can proceed with this
submission:

• Please update your paper.md
  https://github.com/knightsay/backtestGraphics/blob/master/paper.md
  metadata. It still has me listed as an author
• Isn't not obvious to me that this software has a research
  application. Could you please explain what areas of research this software
  is designed to serve?

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[arfon]

OK thanks for the background @karantibrewal. It looks like the paper metadata is still a little wonky. It needs to be formatted as follows:

---
title: 'Fidgit: An ungodly union of GitHub and figshare'
tags:
  - example
  - tags
  - for the paper
authors:
 - name: Arfon M Smith
   orcid: 0000-0002-3957-2474
   affiliation: GitHub Inc.
date: 14 February 2016
bibliography: paper.bib
---

i.e. each author needs a name, orcid and affiliation field.

[karantibrewal]

Hi Arfon, I've made the aforementioned changes. Thanks, Karan

[arfon]

/ cc @openjournals/joss-reviewers - would anyone be willing to review this submission?

If you would like to review this submission then please comment on this thread so that others know you're doing a review (so as not to duplicate effort). Something as simple as :hand: I am reviewing this will suffice.

Reviewer instructions

• Please work through the checklist at the start of this issue.
• If you need any further guidance/clarification take a look at the reviewer guidelines here http://joss.theoj.org/about#reviewer_guidelines
• Please make a publication recommendation at the end of your review

Any questions, please ask for help by commenting on this issue! 🚀

[desilinguist]

✋ I can review this.

[desilinguist]

Before I start my review, I have a somewhat basic question. I am wondering why the name of the author making the submission ("Karan Tibrewal") does not appear in a bunch of the documentation including the main README and the R vignette etc. That should really be fixed.

Now on to my review:

1. The name of the license file is misspelled (LISENCE instead of LICENSE).

2. The release version says 0.1.5 and not 1.0.0.

3. There are no installation instructions in the main README. However, there seem to be installation instructions in the .Rmd file that work just fine. These should also be added to the main README.

4. I looked at the documentation via help(backtestGraphics) and it seems to be fairly complete. However, there seems to be some weird formatting in that file at the end:

   Examples:
   
        ## Not run:
   
        backtestGraphics(data = credit.bt)
        ## End(Not run)
   

5. There are no performance claims made in the documentation so I couldn't verify them.

6. Since I don't really know that much about the financial domain, once I installed the package, it was hard for me to figure out how to try it based just on the README. However, once I ran vignette('backtestGraphics'), I got a really nice PDF that told me that there was sample data available and how I can try out backtestGraphics on that data.

7. I ran the first command suggested by the vignette backtestGraphics(x = commodity), it launched the local shiny app but I couldn't get any plots to show up when I clicked on the Visualize button. However, the online shiny app linked to from the README does produce the graphs. So, perhaps something is broken locally or may be I am doing something wrong? I tried on both Safari and Chrome on my Mac with OS X 10.11.3.

8. Another thing that I noticed was that although a bunch of dependencies were installed when I first installed backtestGraphics, it prompted me to update shiny at the time of running the vignette example. It should really enforce that dependency at installation time.

9. There seem to be tests available but they don't seem to be run automatically and there is no documentation for how to run them.

10. I just noticed that paper.md still has some incorrect formatting at the top.

11. Although @karantibrewal says that this can be used for any time series data, the documentation is very, very specific to financial data and there's no documentation on how one would use this for non-financial data.

In conclusion, I think this is a niche shiny app that seems to be very focused on visualizing financial time series data. As it stands, I am not 100% sure that this has significant application in research but it can perhaps be a useful visualization tool for some researchers. I really think that the main README needs to have a lot more information and the statement of need really needs to be strengthened especially if the authors are claiming that the tool can visualize data outside of the financial domain.

[karantibrewal]

@desilinguist thanks a lot for the feedback. Sorry about the loose ends. We are working on it, and will address all of the aforementioned points by the end of this week.

[pjotrp]

It is important that it is clear what the scientific contribution is of this work. The authors can give some examples of financial research application, preferably with figures in the docs/vignette. It would be even better if the authors can think of a broader application in scientific research and expand their audience.

[arfon]

@whedon assign @desilinguist as reviewer

[whedon]

OK, the reviewer is @desilinguist

[arfon]

@desilinguist thanks a lot for the feedback. Sorry about the loose ends. We are working on it, and will address all of the aforementioned points by the end of this week.

@karantibrewal - could we have a status update on this submission please? Are you still working on the feedback from @desilinguist?

[karantibrewal]

@desilinguist @arfon Sorry for the delay! My team has had some back and
forth with the feedback. We have decided on the following: Backtest Graphics
is not a package that explicitly forwards a topic of research, but instead,
it is a tool that researchers can use to visualize backtest data.

We think our tool could be very relevant for researchers. Financial data is
almost always presented as non-interactive graphs or tables which are
difficult to decipher. Our package gives a quick and efficient avenue to
improve on this (for examples of working papers that could leverage our
work, see here
http://poseidon01.ssrn.com/delivery.php?ID=131074121084086071092103006092110093109023030014084091014027003126031066108084004090035056097013011097115069069031019089020121027020011005061088103084114104003080093061020081065105082020113117021025126103113002025085004089093106079081004015089095090073&EXT=pdf
and here
http://poseidon01.ssrn.com/delivery.php?ID=479004100026072008087021121123114090056069085080028027023073016081091004007096069105004042026057051007117120107082111114008040017035051049100079028086115107065002003044091016065102072117075006087096100113070123109003125096100117001011023126118103&EXT=pdf
).

Please let me know if you have any other questions. We are excited to
contribute to the open source community, and would love to help out in any
way that we can.

On Sat, Oct 8, 2016 at 9:34 AM, Arfon Smith notifications@github.com
wrote:

@desilinguist https://github.com/desilinguist thanks a lot for the
feedback. Sorry about the loose ends. We are working on it, and will
address all of the aforementioned points by the end of this week.

@karantibrewal https://github.com/karantibrewal - could we have a
status update on this submission please? Are you still working on the
feedback from @desilinguist https://github.com/desilinguist?

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[karantibrewal]

@desilinguist @arfon

My co-author just explained to me that I should be more clear in my explanation. Let me try again. I've addressed @desilinguist's points below:

The name of the license file is misspelled (LISENCE instead of LICENSE).

Fixed.

The release version says 0.1.5 and not 1.0.0.

Fixed.

There are no installation instructions in the main README. However, there seem to be installation instructions in the .Rmd file that work just fine. These should also be added to the main README.

Fixed.

Since I don't really know that much about the financial domain, once I installed the package, it was hard for me to figure out how to try it based just on the README. However, once I ran vignette('backtestGraphics'), I got a really nice PDF that told me that there was sample data available and how I can try out backtestGraphics on that data.

Added instructions to the README.

I ran the first command suggested by the vignette backtestGraphics(x = commodity), it launched the local shiny app but I couldn't get any plots to show up when I clicked on the Visualize button. However, the online shiny app linked to from the README does produce the graphs. So, perhaps something is broken locally or may be I am doing something wrong? I tried on both Safari and Chrome on my Mac with OS X 10.11.3.

Apologies! Do you think you can provide me with more details on this? I've tried the package on several computers and it seems to be working fine. If you can give me more information/ screenshots, I can look into this further.

I just noticed that paper.md still has some incorrect formatting at the top.

Fixed.

Although @karantibrewal says that this can be used for any time series data, the documentation is very, very specific to financial data and there's no documentation on how one would use this for non-financial data.

Apologies for the miscommunication! This is a package for financial data, and specifically, for backtest results only.

I think this is a niche shiny app that seems to be very focused on visualizing financial time series data. As it stands, I am not 100% sure that this has significant application in research but it can perhaps be a useful visualization tool for some researchers.

We agree! However, we believe that it is a fairly large niche. For example, we found several working papers on SSRN that could benefit from our package. Most of these papers present their data as tables or static graphics. Our package aims to enable these researchers to provide informative and interactive graphics, without going through the trouble of creating them themselves.

I really think that the main README needs to have a lot more information and the statement of need really needs to be strengthened especially if the authors are claiming that the tool can visualize data outside of the financial domain.

Our package only visualizes financial, and more specifically, backtest data. I have updated the README to make this more explicit.

@desilinguist @arfon Hope this was helpful. Looking forward to any other feedback you may have!

[arfon]

@desilinguist - do you think you could take another look at this submission? @karantibrewal has responded to much of your feedback.

[desilinguist]

@karantibrewal, thanks for making all the changes. I think they help make it clear exactly what the package does and the exact scenarios under which it can be useful to researchers studying financial data. One suggestion, it would be nice to explain in the README that to get more detailed documentation and background, users should run vignette("backtestGraphics") for people who may be new to R.

More importantly, I am still not able to get the local shiny app to actually show me any plots. I basically followed the commodity example in the README and ran the two commands in RStudio and got an error after hitting the "Visualize" button. I am attaching the screenshot here.

[karantibrewal]

@desilinguist thank you for your feedback. Ill go over the issues you
outlined, and revert by begining of next week.

Appreciate the help!

On Oct 24, 2016 9:21 AM, "Nitin Madnani" notifications@github.com wrote:

@karantibrewal https://github.com/karantibrewal, thanks for making all
the changes. I think they help make it clear exactly what the package does
and the exact scenarios under which it can he useful to researchers
studying financial data. One suggestion, it would be nice to explain in the
README that to get more detailed documentation and background, users should
run vignette("backtestGraphics") for people who may be new to R.

More importantly, I am still not able to get the local shiny app to
actually show me any plots. I basically followed the commodity example in
the README and ran the two commands in RStudio and got an error after
hitting the "Visualize" button. I am attaching the screenshot here.

[image: screen shot 2016-10-24 at 9 18 54 am]
https://cloud.githubusercontent.com/assets/161680/19647254/3866993e-99cb-11e6-9b31-c48df128c59e.png

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[karantibrewal]

@desilinguist We've been working on trying to fix your issue. Even though the error message still comes up, you should be able to visualize the graphs now. Can you please confirm? It works on my end:

[desilinguist]

I removed the package and re-installed it and then ran backtestGraphics(x = commodity) again in RStudio. But it still doesn't work for me. No plots and same error.

[karantibrewal]

@desilinguist thanks for your prompt response. aah that’s so weird. just to
be sure, are you using a mac book?

On Nov 4, 2016, at 9:14 AM, Nitin Madnani notifications@github.com wrote:

I removed the package and re-installed it and then ran backtestGraphics(x =
commodity) again in RStudio. But it still doesn't work for me. No plots and
same error.

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[desilinguist]

Yes, I am using a MacBook Pro running macOS 10.12.1 (R version 3.3.0, RStudio version 0.99.903).

[karantibrewal]

Hi @desilinguist, seems to be a dependency issue. We'll fix it for the package, but can you please confirm before that?

devtools::install_version("shiny", version="0.13.2",repos = "http://cran.us.r-project.org")
install.packages("backtestGraphics")
backtestGraphics(x = commodity)

This should work. Please let me know.

[desilinguist]

Thanks! I'm currently on vacation until early December but will take a look once I am back.

[karantibrewal]

Thanks, Nitin. Safe travels.

On Nov 18, 2016 7:34 PM, "Nitin Madnani" notifications@github.com wrote:

Thanks! I'm currently on vacation until early December but will take a
look once I am back.

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[joshuaulrich]

@karantibrewal I'm unable to continue reviewing until you tell me which version of the package I should look at (CRAN or GitHub). If the GitHub version is the latest, please fix the issue that prevents the package from building.

[karantibrewal]

@joshuaulrich sorry for delay. GitHub version is latest -- issues have been fixed now. Thanks for flagging.

[arfon]

@joshuaulrich - over to you I think for another look :-)

[arfon]

@joshuaulrich - over to you I think for another look :-)

👋 @joshuaulrich - friendly reminder to take another look at this sometime soon please.

[joshuaulrich]

Sorry for the delay @arfon. Started a new job on 10/9 and added child number 3 on 11/1. It's been a busy couple of months.

@karantibrewal Here are some minor comments on the PDF:

• p2 ¶1 Unnecessary space between "futures" and comma (", futures , and")
• p2 ¶2 s/Quantopia/Quantopian/
• p2 ¶4 The abbreviation NMV is not previously defined
• p2 ¶4 Reference the figure number instead of "Below is a screen shot of the plots". E.g., "Figure 2 contains a screenshot of the plots"
• p2 ¶5 s/backtestgraphics/backtestGraphics/

And some comments on the package:

The GitHub version (0.1.5) is still behind the CRAN version (0.1.6). Ideally, the Version and Date fields in the DESCRIPTION file should be incremented.

I initially thought the Shiny interface was not working because no data are displayed when it opens. It would be helpful if the initial Shiny page contained instructions or a note that you have to click the [Visualize] button before you will see any results.

The "Strategies" drop down input contains the 3 strategies in commodity$strategy, but also contains 7 other strategies (e.g. Strategy 1.1). It's not clear what those are. You could use the "optgroup" functionality of selectInput to label the portfolio-level sub-strategies.

The previous comment also applies to the "Instruments" drop down input.

You should try to use synchronization to link the zooming of the plots.

It's very difficult to interpret the P&L alongside the market value for any aggregate because they can simultaneously move in opposite directions if a product is added/removed from the aggregate. For example, look at the livestock aggregate for strategy 1 and portfolio 1 on in 2005-11-22. The screenshot below shows a positive P&L of ~13.5k while the gross market value falls by ~3.5m. This is because substrategy 1.1 has observations on 2005-11-21 but not on 2005-11-22 and the market value of substrategy 1.1 is not carried forward to days it does not have P&L.

The GitHub repository does not contain instructions for how to contribute to the project or seek help. You can look at the quantmod contributing guide as an example. It contains several references to other contributing guides. You might also consider adding an issue and/or pull request template. I have an issue template for quantmod.

[arfon]

@karantibrewal - 👋 - did you get a chance to review @joshuaulrich's feedback yet?

[karantibrewal]

Thanks for the feedback @joshuaulrich! We will turn these in soon (some delay b/c of finals period).

[arfon]

Ping @karantibrewal - are you still interested in pursuing this publication with JOSS?

[karantibrewal]

Oops - sorry about this @arfon

@joshuaulrich comments have been fixed now. Details are below:

p2 ¶1 Unnecessary space between "futures" and comma (", futures , and")
p2 ¶2 s/Quantopia/Quantopian/
p2 ¶4 The abbreviation NMV is not previously defined
p2 ¶4 Reference the figure number instead of "Below is a screen shot of the plots". E.g., "Figure 2 contains a screenshot of the plots"
p2 ¶5 s/backtestgraphics/backtestGraphics/

[Fixed. Although not quite sure what the last point means. I think we need to use the name of the package instead of saying "our package". I changed that.]

The GitHub version (0.1.5) is still behind the CRAN version (0.1.6). Ideally, the Version and Date fields in the DESCRIPTION file should be incremented.

Fixed

I initially thought the Shiny interface was not working because no data are displayed when it opens. It would be helpful if the initial Shiny page contained instructions or a note that you have to click the [Visualize] button before you will see any results.

Fixed.

The "Strategies" drop down input contains the 3 strategies in commodity$strategy, but also contains 7 other strategies (e.g. Strategy 1.1). It's not clear what those are. You could use the "optgroup" functionality of selectInput to label the portfolio-level sub-strategies.

The previous comment also applies to the "Instruments" drop down input.

Drop downs look much more informative now - thanks for this one!

You should try to use synchronization to link the zooming of the plots.

Fixed.

It's very difficult to interpret the P&L alongside the market value for any aggregate because they can simultaneously move in opposite directions if a product is added/removed from the aggregate. For example, look at the livestock aggregate for strategy 1 and portfolio 1 on in 2005-11-22. The screenshot below shows a positive P&L of ~13.5k while the gross market value falls by ~3.5m. This is because substrategy 1.1 has observations on 2005-11-21 but not on 2005-11-22 and the market value of substrategy 1.1 is not carried forward to days it does not have P&L.

This scenario can very well happen, and as I will explain now, it is not unreasonable.

Market value is a stock and P&L is a flow.

A stock is something that you measure at a specific moment in time. So, the market value of our cattle futures position is, roughly, number of contracts at a point in time multiplied by price per contract. Since the data we provide at a daily frequency, we only get a market value once per day.

P&L, on the other hand, is a flow - so it takes into account each trade you make. So for example, say you own 3 futures contracts today worth $ 1 mil. Tomorrow, you make day trades where you lose $50k. On close of market, you might still own 3 contracts worth $1 mil. In this case, your PL will be -50K but there will be no change to market value.

[karantibrewal]

@joshuaulrich @arfon gentle follow up on this. Please let us know your thoughts, and if there is anything else you'd like us to fix!

[arfon]

Friendly reminder to take another look at this @joshuaulrich when you get a chance 😄

[joshuaulrich]

Will review this weekend. I did notice that backtestGraphics was removed from CRAN since late January because R CMD check problems were not addressed. I ran R CMD check locally and on the default platforms for rhub::check_for_cran(), but I did not see any obvious issues. @karantibrewal, what issue(s) did CRAN ask to be fixed?

[davidkane9]

D'uh! Missed that notice because we failed to maintain a current maintainer e-mail address. So, not sure what CRAN wanted fixed. Karan: Please make yourself the maintainer and resubmit to CRAN.

…

On Sat, Mar 17, 2018 at 12:42 PM, Joshua Ulrich ***@***.***> wrote: @afron <https://github.com/afron>, @karantibrewal <https://github.com/karantibrewal>, Will review this weekend. I did notice that backtestGraphics was removed from CRAN <https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/backtestGraphics/index.html> since late January because R CMD check problems were not addressed. I ran R CMD check locally and on the default platforms for rhub::check_for_cran(), but I did not see any obvious issues. @karantibrewal <https://github.com/karantibrewal>, what issue(s) did CRAN ask to be fixed? — You are receiving this because you are subscribed to this thread. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#30 (comment)>, or mute the thread <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AEV4k-Y5VraGm1os99HiMiO29-1Hlkbnks5tfQSkgaJpZM4I6ONu> .

[joshuaulrich]

Oops, I did not respond to questions about my initial comments.

Although not quite sure what [p2 ¶5 s/backtestgraphics/backtestGraphics/] means.

The "s/foo/bar/" means substitute "foo" with "bar". It's a command you can do in many text programming languages (e.g. sed, awk) and is shorthand many programmers use. Sorry for the confusion! In this case, it means you need to change "backtestgraphics" with "backtestGraphics". The specific text is, "...more complex backtests, \pkg{backtestgraphics} allows the user...".

---

This scenario can very well happen, and as I will explain now, it is not unreasonable.

Right, I understand why it happens and I agree that the results are reasonable. My point is that how they are displayed makes it hard to interpret the aggregate results. I don't necessarily think this is a blocker to publication, but I do think it will cause confusion. I would try plotting aggregates as stacked bar charts of their components, and/or annotating the new bar with the current instrument count whenever it is not the same as the prior bar's instrument count.

---

New comments:

• In the summary table, "Allocated Capital" should be changed to "Allocated Capital (AC)". That will provide context for the "Annualized Return on AC (%)" and "Annualized Volatility on AC (%)" rows.
• Still need a contributing guide.
• With paper.md:
  • ¶1 has an unnecessary space between "futures" and comma (", futures , and")
  • ¶1 "default" is incorrectly spelled "defualt"
  • ¶5 accommodate"" is incorrectly spelled "accomodate"

Conclusion: My opinion is that this is ready for publication after the minor copy edits are done, the contributing guide is added to the GitHub repo, the example runs, and the package is back on CRAN.

---

Things to address for CRAN:

• Need to add .bib, .json, and paper.md to .Rbuildignore. Or put them in a new directory and add the directory name to .Rbuildignore. Whatever you choose, just make sure they're not in the package tarball you submit to CRAN (R CMD check --as-cran will warn you about them).
• Add LICENSE to DESCRIPTION (again, R CMD check --as-cran will warn about this).

[arfon]

👍 thanks @joshuaulrich

[karantibrewal]

Thanks for your comments @joshuaulrich. They have been fixed now.

However, I can't get the CRAN issue fixed for the life of me. It seems like a file path issue. The error message specifically is:

Messages: sh: /usr/local/opt/texinfo/bin/texi2dvi: No such file or directory Calls: <Anonymous> -> texi2pdf -> texi2dvi Execution halted

Do you have any idea of how to fix this? Any advice would be much appreciated!

[joshuaulrich]

@karantibrewal I can't see any of your fixes. In fact, I don't see any commits in the repo since 3/19. The error looks like you don't have texi2dvi installed. On Ubuntu, that's in the texinfo package.

[karantibrewal]

@joshuaulrich Sorry, what do you mean? All your comments from your previous post have been turned in (except for CRAN issue). These fixes were part of the 3/19 commit.

[joshuaulrich]

@karantibrewal I was confused because you said the issues were fixed, but the last activity was a month ago; and the issues I opened for them had not been closed. It's good practice to put "Fixes #XYZ" in the commit that fixes an issue, so you have a cross-reference of the commit and issue. Also, GitHub (and GitLab, Bitbucket, etc) will automatically close issue #XYZ for you.

And DESCRIPTION is still in your .Rbuildignore. I commented about 2 weeks ago that this would mean the package cannot be installed. In fact, R CMD build backtestGraphics fails because the package can't be installed to build the vignettes.

[arfon]

@karantibrewal - please revisit this review when you get a chance. It would be good to get this closed out.

[arfon]

Ping @karantibrewal - please revisit this soon.

[arfon]

After numerous attempts to contact the reviewer, I'm assuming @karantibrewal is no longer interested in pursuing this submission in JOSS.

@joshuaulrich - thank you very much for your time, and I'm sorry this didn't make it through review.

[joshuaulrich]

No need to apologise. Let me know if there are other finance or time series reviews I can help with.