
Introduction
A time series is considered stationary if its probability distribution does not change over time. If the price series of a security is stationary, then it would be a suitable candidate for a mean-reversion trading strategy. However, most security price series are not stationary: they seem to follow a lognormal random walk; and drift farther and farther away from the initial value.
We need to find a pair of securities such that the combination of the two is stationary, e.g. buying a security and shorting another. Two securities that form a stationary or cointegrating pair are often from the same industry group such as Coca-Cola Company and PepsiCo. In this article, we illustrate how to pick a good cointegrating pair by applying the augmented Dickey-Fuller test to security pairs to check for cointegration.
Step-by-step
We will proceed as follows:
- Determine The Pairs: We present the security pairs to analyze.
- Prepare The Data: We pull and process securities’ open-high-low-close-volume (OHLCV) data.
- Calculate The Spread: We apply the ordinary least squares (OLS) method to calculate the spread between two securities.
- Check For Cointegration: We use the augmented Dickey-Fuller test to check if two securities form a stationary or cointegrating pair.
You can find the code on https://github.com/DinodC/cointegrating-pair.
Determine The Pairs
Below are the pairs of securities which we will check for cointegration:
1. Gold
Gold-themed exchange traded funds (ETF):
- VanEck Vectors Gold Miners ETF (GDX): ETF which tracks a basket of gold-mining companies.
- SPDR Gold Shares (GLD): ETF which replicates the price of gold bullion.
2. Fast Food
Companies serving fast food:
- McDonald’s Corporation (MCD): Fast food company which gave the whole world classics like Big Mac, Hot Fudge Sundae, and Happy Meal.
- YUM! Brands, Inc. (YUM): Fast food company which operates Taco Bell, KFC and Pizza Hut.
3. Cryptocurrencies
Digital currencies:
- Bitcoin USD (BTC-USD): A decentralized cryptocurrency that can be sent from user to user on the peer-to-peer bitcoin network established in 2009.
- Ethereum USD (ETH-USD): An open source, public, blockchain-based distributed computing platform and operating system released in 2015.
Prepare The Data
In this section, we illustrate download and preparation of securities’ price series.
We pull the securities’ historical OHLCV data from Yahoo Finance.
We select the adjusted close prices for each security and create a new Dataframe object.
Import packages
import pandas as pd from pandas import DataFrame from statsmodels.tsa.stattools import adfuller import statsmodels.api as sm import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
Magic
%matplotlib inline
Set tickers list
tickers = ['GDX', 'GLD', 'MCD', 'YUM', 'BTC-USD', 'ETH-USD']
Pull OHLCV data
# Initialize list of DataFrames df_list = [] # Load DataFrames for i in tickers: # Load data df = pd.read_csv(i + '.csv', index_col=0, parse_dates=True) # Set multi-level columns df.columns = pd.MultiIndex.from_product([[i], ['Open', 'High', 'Low', 'Close', 'Adj Close', 'Volume']]) # Update list df_list.append(df) # Merge DataFrames data = pd.concat(df_list, axis=1, join='inner') # Drop NaNs data.dropna(inplace=True)
Inspect OHLCV data
data.head()
GDX | ||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Open | High | Low | Close | Adj Close | Volume | |
Date | ||||||
2015-08-06 | 13.21 | 13.69 | 13.11 | 13.36 | 13.033523 | 69121200 |
2015-08-07 | 13.42 | 13.85 | 13.33 | 13.40 | 13.072546 | 50618200 |
2015-08-10 | 13.57 | 14.29 | 13.36 | 14.27 | 13.921287 | 91376800 |
2015-08-11 | 14.44 | 14.53 | 13.94 | 14.53 | 14.174931 | 53731900 |
2015-08-12 | 14.81 | 15.53 | 14.78 | 15.52 | 15.140740 | 123217200 |
data.tail()
GDX | ||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Open | High | Low | Close | Adj Close | Volume | |
Date | ||||||
2019-07-08 | 25.450001 | 25.610001 | 25.209999 | 25.420000 | 25.420000 | 40606100 |
2019-07-09 | 25.330000 | 25.660000 | 25.209999 | 25.650000 | 25.650000 | 37529700 |
2019-07-10 | 26.020000 | 26.230000 | 25.770000 | 26.200001 | 26.200001 | 56454300 |
2019-07-11 | 26.129999 | 26.280001 | 25.719999 | 25.940001 | 25.940001 | 54013400 |
2019-07-12 | 26.000000 | 26.250000 | 25.870001 | 26.209999 | 26.209999 | 31795200 |
Select adjusted close prices
# Initialize dictionary of adjusted close close_dict = {} # Update dictionary for i in tickers: close_dict[i] = data[i]['Adj Close'] # Create DataFrame close = pd.DataFrame(close_dict)
Inspect adjusted close prices
close.head()
GDX | GLD | MCD | YUM | BTC-USD | ETH-USD | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Date | ||||||
2015-08-06 | 13.033523 | 104.389999 | 89.038742 | 57.964733 | 277.890015 | 3.000 |
2015-08-07 | 13.072546 | 104.650002 | 88.653343 | 57.859062 | 258.600006 | 1.200 |
2015-08-10 | 13.921287 | 105.720001 | 89.074577 | 57.997757 | 269.029999 | 0.990 |
2015-08-11 | 14.174931 | 106.260002 | 88.554787 | 55.171165 | 267.660004 | 1.288 |
2015-08-12 | 15.140740 | 107.750000 | 88.079796 | 53.282372 | 263.440002 | 1.885 |
close.tail()
GDX | GLD | MCD | YUM | BTC-USD | ETH-USD | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Date | ||||||
2019-07-08 | 25.420000 | 131.289993 | 212.160004 | 110.050003 | 12567.019531 | 307.890015 |
2019-07-09 | 25.650000 | 131.750000 | 212.089996 | 110.489998 | 12099.120117 | 288.640015 |
2019-07-10 | 26.200001 | 133.830002 | 213.000000 | 110.980003 | 11343.120117 | 268.559998 |
2019-07-11 | 25.940001 | 132.699997 | 212.690002 | 111.500000 | 11797.370117 | 275.410004 |
2019-07-12 | 26.209999 | 133.529999 | 212.990005 | 111.050003 | 11363.969727 | 268.940002 |
Consider the training set from 2018 to present
training = close['2018-01-01':'2020-01-01'].copy()
Inspect training set
training.head()
GDX | GLD | MCD | YUM | BTC-USD | ETH-USD | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Date | ||||||
2018-01-02 | 23.694632 | 125.150002 | 166.895370 | 79.503891 | 14754.129883 | 861.969971 |
2018-01-03 | 23.445948 | 124.820000 | 166.192001 | 79.435699 | 15156.620117 | 941.099976 |
2018-01-04 | 23.595158 | 125.459999 | 167.357834 | 80.244370 | 15180.080078 | 944.830017 |
2018-01-05 | 23.545422 | 125.330002 | 167.695084 | 80.712036 | 16954.779297 | 967.130005 |
2018-01-08 | 23.296738 | 125.309998 | 167.579422 | 80.848442 | 14976.169922 | 1136.109985 |
training.tail()
GDX | GLD | MCD | YUM | BTC-USD | ETH-USD | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Date | ||||||
2019-07-08 | 25.420000 | 131.289993 | 212.160004 | 110.050003 | 12567.019531 | 307.890015 |
2019-07-09 | 25.650000 | 131.750000 | 212.089996 | 110.489998 | 12099.120117 | 288.640015 |
2019-07-10 | 26.200001 | 133.830002 | 213.000000 | 110.980003 | 11343.120117 | 268.559998 |
2019-07-11 | 25.940001 | 132.699997 | 212.690002 | 111.500000 | 11797.370117 | 275.410004 |
2019-07-12 | 26.209999 | 133.529999 | 212.990005 | 111.050003 | 11363.969727 | 268.940002 |
Calculate the number of pairs
no_pairs = round(0.5 * len(tickers))
Plot the adjusted close prices

plt.figure(figsize=(20, 20)) for i in range(no_pairs): # Primary axis color = 'tab:blue' ax1 = plt.subplot(3, 1, i+1) plt.plot(training[tickers[2*i]], color=color) ax1.set_ylabel('Adjusted Close Price of ' + tickers[2*i], color=color) ax1.tick_params(labelcolor=color) # Secondary axis color = 'tab:orange' ax2 = ax1.twinx() plt.plot(training[tickers[2*i+1]], color=color) ax2.set_ylabel('Adjusted Close Price of ' + tickers[2*i+1], color=color) ax2.tick_params(labelcolor=color) # Both axis plt.xlim([training.index[0], training.index[-1]]) plt.title('Adjusted Close Prices of ' + tickers[2*i] + ' and ' + tickers[2*i+1])
Calculate The Spread
In this section, we calculate the spread between the securities. We apply the OLS method between the securities to calculate for the hedge ratio. We standardize the spread by subtracting the mean and scaling by the standard deviation of the spread.
Calculate the spread between each pair
# Initialize the spread list spread_list = [] for i in range(no_pairs): # Run an OLS regression between the pairs model = sm.regression.linear_model.OLS(training[tickers[2*i]], training[tickers[2*i+1]]) # Calculate the hedge ratio results = model.fit() hedge_ratio = results.params[0] # Calculate the spread spread = training[tickers[2*i]] - hedge_ratio * training[tickers[2*i+1]] # Mean and standard deviation of the spread spread_mean = spread.mean() spread_std = spread.std() # Standardize the spread z_score = (spread - spread_mean) / spread_std # Update the spread list spread_list.append(z_score)
Plot the spread
plt.figure(figsize=(20, 20)) for i in range(no_pairs): plt.subplot(3, 1, i+1) plt.plot(spread_list[i]) plt.xlim([spread.index[0], spread.index[-1]]) plt.ylim([-3, 3]) plt.title('Spread between ' + tickers[2*i] + ' and ' + tickers[2*i+1])

Check For Cointegration
In this section, we test if two securities form a stationary or cointegrating pair.
We use the augmented Dickey-Fuller (ADF) test where we have the following:
- The null hypothesis is that a unit root is present in the price series, it is non-stationary.
- The alternative is that unit root is not present in the prices series, it is stationary.
Run cointegration check using augmented Dickey-Fuller test
# Initialize stats stats_list = [] for i in range(len(spread_list)): # ADF test stats = adfuller(spread_list[i]) # Update stats stats_list.append(stats)
Set the pairs
# Initialize pairs pairs = [] for i in range(no_pairs): # Update pairs pairs.append(tickers[2*i] + '/' + tickers[2*i+1])
Create stats DataFrame
# Initialize dict stats_dict = {} for i in range(no_pairs): # Update dict stats_dict[pairs[i]] = [stats_list[i][0], stats_list[i][1], stats_list[i][4]['1%'], stats_list[i][4]['5%'], stats_list[i][4]['10%']] # Create DataFrame stats_df = pd.DataFrame(stats_dict, index=['ADF Statistic', 'P-value', '1%', '5%', '10%'])
Inspect
stats_df
GDX/GLD | MCD/YUM | BTC-USD/ETH-USD | |
---|---|---|---|
ADF Statistic | -3.386075 | -3.072452 | -2.161601 |
P-value | 0.011443 | 0.028660 | 0.220476 |
1% | -3.448344 | -3.447815 | -3.448344 |
5% | -2.869469 | -2.869237 | -2.869469 |
10% | -2.570994 | -2.570870 | -2.570994 |
Remarks:
- For the spread between GDX and GLD, the ADF statistic is -3.39 which is lower than the 1% critical value -3.45, which means that there is a better than 99% probability that the spread between GDX and GLD is stationary.
- For the spread between MCD and YUM, the ADF statistic is -3.07 is between the 1% critical value -3.45 and 5% critical value of -2.87, which means that there is a better than 95% probability that the spread between MCD and YUM is stationary.
- For the spread between BTC-USD and ETH-USD, the ADF statistic is -2.16 which is higher than the critical values, which means that the spread between BTC-USD and ETH-USD is not stationary.
Conclusion
In this article, we demonstrated how to form a a good cointegrating pair of securities. We used the OLS method to determine the hedge ratio between securities; and the ADF test to check for stationarity. The results suggest the following: cointegraing pairs could be formed within gold (GDX and GLD) and fast food securities (MCD and YUM); and cointegrating pairs could not be formed within cryptocurrencies (BTC-USD and ETH-USD).