Computing diffs within groups of a dataframe

wouldn’t be just easier to do what yourself describe, namely

df.sort(['ticker', 'date'], inplace=True)
df['diffs'] = df['value'].diff()

and then correct for borders:

mask = df.ticker != df.ticker.shift(1)
df['diffs'][mask] = np.nan

to maintain the original index you may do idx = df.index in the beginning, and then at the end you can do df.reindex(idx), or if it is a huge dataframe, perform the operations on

df.filter(['ticker', 'date', 'value'])

and then join the two dataframes at the end.

edit: alternatively, ( though still not using groupby )

df.set_index(['ticker','date'], inplace=True)
df.sort_index(inplace=True)
df['diffs'] = np.nan 

for idx in df.index.levels[0]:
    df.diffs[idx] = df.value[idx].diff()

for

   date ticker  value
0    63      C   1.65
1    88      C  -1.93
2    22      C  -1.29
3    76      A  -0.79
4    72      B  -1.24
5    34      A  -0.23
6    92      B   2.43
7    22      A   0.55
8    32      A  -2.50
9    59      B  -1.01

this will produce:

             value  diffs
ticker date              
A      22     0.55    NaN
       32    -2.50  -3.05
       34    -0.23   2.27
       76    -0.79  -0.56
B      59    -1.01    NaN
       72    -1.24  -0.23
       92     2.43   3.67
C      22    -1.29    NaN
       63     1.65   2.94
       88    -1.93  -3.58