Rate Distortion Minimization in a Python Clustering Algorithm

I'm attempting to solve for $\hat{k}$ clusters, such that the rate distortion is minimized, as described here, however, the answers that I am getting from my algorithm are not following the "Jump" behavior (as is needed to appropriately choose $k$).

My current process:

Given a $N$ by $d$ matrix of asset returns:

1. Calculate the correlation of the assets, resulting in a $d \times d$ correlation matrix.
2. For $k \in [1, d]$ calculate the $1 \times d$ vectors of cluster labels, using the correlation matrix as the input
3. For $k \in [1, d]$ calculate $k, 1 \times d$ vectors of cluster centroids, using the correlation matrix as the input

4. Based on the cluster label (see code below), construct $\mathbf{A}$, a $d \times d$ matrix of cluster centroids based on the cluster label of each asset. So for instance, say $k=3$ and there are 4 assets total, and the results of the k-means cluster is:

   • asset 1 is in cluster 1
   • asset 2 is in cluster 1
   • asset 3 is in cluster 2

   • asset 4 is in cluster 3

     I would create a $4 \times 4$ matrix where $\textrm{row }1 = \textrm{centroid } 1$ (a 1, 4 row vector), $\textrm{row }2 = \textrm{centroid } 1$ $\textrm{row }3 = \textrm{centroid } 2$ (a 1, 4 row vector), $\textrm{row }4 = \textrm{centroid} 3$

5. Then calculate the rate distortion function, $\epsilon$, for each $k$, where:

   $\epsilon_{k} \triangleq \frac{1}{p}\mathbf{A^\intercal}\mathbf{\Sigma^{-1}}\mathbf{A}$ where, $\mathbf{\Sigma} \triangleq$ The Covariance Matrix of the $N \times d$ asset returns NOTE: I'm not certain whether I take the covariance of the asset returns or the covariance of the covariance matrix (which didn't seem right to me).

6. This leaves me with a $d \times d$ matrix that I then sum all the values, and follow the remainder of the procedure listed here. This procedure is derived from the paper, Finding the number of clusters in a data set: An information theoretic approach

My Python Code is as follows:

  import Pycluster

  def rate_distortion(X, cov_matrix, num_clusters):
      clusterid, error, nfound = Pycluster.kcluster(X, nclusters = num_clusters)
      cdata, cmask = Pycluster.clustercentroids(X, clusterid = clusterid)
      c_mat = pandas.DataFrame(numpy.empty(X.shape), columns = X.columns)
      for i, cluster in enumerate(clusterid):
        c_mat.ix[i, :] = cdata[cluster, :]

      diff_mat = numpy.subtract(X, c_mat)
      p = X.shape[1]
      Y = p/2.
      distortion = 1./p * numpy.sum(numpy.dot(numpy.dot(diff_mat.transpose(),  numpy.linalg.inv(cov_matrix)), diff_mat))
      return distortion**(-Y)

To execute a script that exactly illustrates to what I'm referring to, use data located here and the following script:

  import pandas, numpy, Pycluster

  prices = pandas.DataFrame.from_csv('asset_prices.csv')
  returns = prices.apply(numpy.log).diff()
  k = numpy.arange(1,12)
  d = []
  for i in k:
        d.append(rate_distortion(returns.corr(), returns.cov(), i)
  d = pandas.Series(d, index = k)

  In [22]: d
  Out[22]: 
  1     8.845139e-33
  2     3.969062e-29
  3     9.387323e-28
  4     9.200729e-28
  5     4.675902e-18
  6     2.412458e-21
  7     3.582043e-18
  8     8.094695e-17
  9     1.424341e-16
  10    4.320064e-14
  11             inf
  dtype: float64