How to simulate daily stock returns in R - r

Question

I need to simulate a stock's daily returns. I am given r=(P(t+1)-P(t))/P(t) (normal distribution) mean of µ=1% and sd of σ =5%. P(t) is the stock price at end of day t. Simulate 100,000 instances of such daily returns.
Since I am a new R user, how do I setup t for this example. I am assuming P should be setup as:
P <- rnorm(100000, .01, .05)
r=(P(t+1)-P(t))/P(t)

Answer 1

You are getting it wrong: from what you wrote, the mean and the sd applies on the return and not on the price. I furthermore make the assumption that the mean is set for an annual basis (1% rate of return from one day to another is just ...huge!) and t moves along a day range of 252 days per year.
With these hypothesis, you can get a series of daily return in R with:
r = rnorm(100000, .01/252, .005)
Assuming the model you mentioned, you can get the serie of the prices P (containing 100001 elements, I will take P[1]=100 - change it with your own value if needed):
factor = 1 + r
temp = 100
P = c(100, sapply(1:100000, function(u){
p = factor[u]*temp
temp<<-p
p
}))
Your configuration for the return price you mention (mean=0.01 and sd=0.05) will however lead to exploding stock price (unrealistic model and parameters). Be carefull to check that prod(rate) will not return Inf .
Here is the result for the first 1000 values of P, representing 4 years:
plot(1:1000, P[1:1000])
One of the classical model (which does not mean this model is realistic) assumes the observed log return are following a normal distribution.
Hope this helps.

Answer 2

I see you already have an answer and ColonelBeauvel might have more domain knowledge than I (assuming this is business or finance homework.) I approached it a bit differently and am going to post a commented transcript. His method uses the <<- operator which is considered as a somewhat suspect strategy in R, although I must admit it seems quite elegant in this application. I suspect my method will probably be a lot faster if you ever get into doing large scale simulations.
Starting with your code:
P <- rnorm(100000, .01, .05)
# r=(P(t+1)-P(t))/P(t) definition, not R code
# inference: P_t+1 = r_t*P_t + P_t = P_t*(1+r_t)
# So, all future P's will be determined by P_1 and r_t
Since P_2 will be P_1*(1+r_1)r_1 then P_3 will be P_1*(1+r_1)*(1+r_2), .i.e a continued product of the vector (1+r) for which there is a vectorized function.
P <- P_1*cumprod(1+r)
#Error: object 'P_1' not found
P_1 <- 100
P <- P_1*cumprod(1+r)
#Error: object 'r' not found
# So the random simulation should have been for `r`, not P
r <- rnorm(100000, .01, .05)
P <- P_1*cumprod(1+r)
plot(P)
#Error in plot.window(...) : infinite axis extents [GEPretty(-inf,inf,5)]
str(P)
This occurred because the cumulative product went above the limits of numerical capacity and got assigned to Inf (infinity). Let's be a little more careful:
r <- rnorm(300, .01, .05)
P <- P_1*cumprod(1+r)
plot(P)
This strategy below iteratively updates the price at time t as 'temp' and multiplies it it by a single value. It's likely to be a lot slower.
r = rnorm(100000, .01/252, .005)
factor = 1 + r
temp = 100
P = c(100, sapply(1:300, function(u){
p = factor[u]*temp
temp<<-p
p
}))
> system.time( {r <- rnorm(10000, .01/250, .05)
+ P <- P_1*cumprod(1+r)
+ })
user system elapsed
0.001 0.000 0.002
> system.time({r = rnorm(10000, .01/252, .05)
+ factor = 1 + r
+ temp = 100
+ P = c(100, sapply(1:300, function(u){
+ p = factor[u]*temp
+ temp<<-p
+ p
+ }))})
user system elapsed
0.079 0.004 0.101

Answer 3

To simulate a log return of the daily stock, use the following method:
Consider working with 256 days of daily stock return data.
Load the original data into R
Create another data.frame for simulating Log return.
Code:
logr <- data.frame(Date=gati$Date[1:255], Shareprice=gati$Adj.Close[1:255], LogReturn=log(gati$Adj.Close[1:251]/gati$Adj.Close[2:256]))
gati is the dataset
Date and Adj.close are the variables
notice the [] values.

Answer 4

P <- rnorm(100000, .01, .05)
r=(P(t+1)-P(t))/P(t)
second line translates directly into :
r <- (P[-1] - P[length(P)]) / P[length(P)] # (1:5)[-1] gives 2:5

Answer 5

Stock returns are not normally distributed for Simple Returns ("R"), given their -1 lower bound per compounded period. However, Log Returns ("r") generally are. The below is adapted from #42's post above. There don't seem to be any solutions to simulating from Log Mean ("Expected Return") and Log Stdev ("Risk") in #Rstats, so I've included them here for those looking for "Monte Carlo Simulation using Log Expected Return and Log Standard Deviation"), which are normally distributed, and have no lower bound at -1. Note: from this single example, it would require looping over thousands of times to simulate a portfolio--i.e., stacking 100k plots like the below and averaging a single slice to calculate a portfolio's average expected return at a chosen forward month. The below should give a good basis for doing so.
startPrice = 100
forwardPeriods = 12*10 # 10 years * 12 months with Month-over-Month E[r]
factor = exp(rnorm(forwardPeriods, .04, .10)) # Monthly Expected Ln Return = .04 and Expected Monthly Risk = .1
temp = startPrice
P = c(startPrice, sapply(1:forwardPeriods, function(u){p = factor[u]*temp; temp <<- p; p}))
plot(P, type = "b", xlab = "Forward End of Month Prices", ylab = "Expected Price from Log E[r]", ylim = c(0,max(P)))
n <- length(P)
logRet <- log(P[-1]/P[-n])
# Notice, with many samples this nearly matches our initial log E[r] and stdev(r)
mean(logRet)
# [1] 0.04540838
sqrt(var(logRet))
# [1] 0.1055676
If tested with a negative log expected return, the price should not fall below zero. The other examples, will return negative prices with negative expected returns. The code I've shared here can be tested to confirm that negative prices do not exist in the simulation.
min(P)
# [1] 100
max(P)
# [1] 23252.67

Answer 6

Horizontal axis is number of days, and vertical axis is price.
n_prices <- 1000
volatility <- 0.2
amplitude <- 10
chng <- amplitude * rnorm(n_prices, 0, volatility)
prices <- cumsum(chng)
plot(prices, type='l')