I think you want to do something like this:
In [26]: data
Out[26]:
Date Close Adj Close
251 2011-01-03 147.48 143.25
250 2011-01-04 147.64 143.41
249 2011-01-05 147.05 142.83
248 2011-01-06 148.66 144.40
247 2011-01-07 147.93 143.69
In [27]: data.set_index('Date').diff()
Out[27]:
Close Adj Close
Date
2011-01-03 NaN NaN
2011-01-04 0.16 0.16
2011-01-05 -0.59 -0.58
2011-01-06 1.61 1.57
2011-01-07 -0.73 -0.71