Python: Pandas Dataframe how to multiply entire column with a scalar

How do I multiply each element of a given column of my dataframe with a scalar? (I have tried looking on SO, but cannot seem to find the right solution)

Doing something like:

df['quantity'] *= -1 # trying to multiply each row's quantity column with -1

gives me a warning:

A value is trying to be set on a copy of a slice from a DataFrame.
Try using .loc[row_indexer,col_indexer] = value instead

Note: If possible, I do not want to be iterating over the dataframe and do something like this...as I think any standard math operation on an entire column should be possible w/o having to write a loop:

for idx, row in df.iterrows():
    df.loc[idx, 'quantity'] *= -1

EDIT:

I am running 0.16.2 of Pandas

full trace:

 SettingWithCopyWarning: 
A value is trying to be set on a copy of a slice from a DataFrame.
Try using .loc[row_indexer,col_indexer] = value instead

See the the caveats in the documentation: http://pandas.pydata.org/pandas-docs/stable/indexing.html#indexing-view-versus-copy
  self.obj[item] = s

try using apply function.

df['quantity'] = df['quantity'].apply(lambda x: x*-1)

Note: for those using pandas 0.20.3 and above, and are looking for an answer, all these options will work:

df = pd.DataFrame(np.ones((5,6)),columns=['one','two','three',
                                       'four','five','six'])
df.one *=5
df.two = df.two*5
df.three = df.three.multiply(5)
df['four'] = df['four']*5
df.loc[:, 'five'] *=5
df.iloc[:, 5] = df.iloc[:, 5]*5

which results in

   one  two  three  four  five  six
0  5.0  5.0    5.0   5.0   5.0  5.0
1  5.0  5.0    5.0   5.0   5.0  5.0
2  5.0  5.0    5.0   5.0   5.0  5.0
3  5.0  5.0    5.0   5.0   5.0  5.0
4  5.0  5.0    5.0   5.0   5.0  5.0

Here's the answer after a bit of research:

df.loc[:,'quantity'] *= -1 #seems to prevent SettingWithCopyWarning 

More recent pandas versions have the pd.DataFrame.multiply function.

df['quantity'] = df['quantity'].multiply(-1)