Home / Glossary / Sortino Ratio
FinanceSortino Ratio
Like Sharpe, but penalises only downside volatility.
The Sortino ratio divides excess return by downside deviation, so it doesn't punish a strategy for large upside swings. It better reflects how investors actually feel about risk — they fear losses, not gains.
Formula / theory
Sortino = (R_p − R_f) / σ_downside
In Python
import numpy as np downside = returns[returns < 0].std() sortino = (returns.mean()*252 - rf) / (downside*np.sqrt(252))