No Arabic abstract
Markowitz (1952, 1959) laid down the ground-breaking work on the mean-variance analysis. Under his framework, the theoretical optimal allocation vector can be very different from the estimated one for large portfolios due to the intrinsic difficulty of estimating a vast covariance matrix and return vector. This can result in adverse performance in portfolio selected based on empirical data due to the accumulation of estimation errors. We address this problem by introducing the gross-exposure constrained mean-variance portfolio selection. We show that with gross-exposure constraint the theoretical optimal portfolios have similar performance to the empirically selected ones based on estimated covariance matrices and there is no error accumulation effect from estimation of vast covariance matrices. This gives theoretical justification to the empirical results in Jagannathan and Ma (2003). We also show that the no-short-sale portfolio is not diversified enough and can be improved by allowing some short positions. As the constraint on short sales relaxes, the number of selected assets varies from a small number to the total number of stocks, when tracking portfolios or selecting assets. This achieves the optimal sparse portfolio selection, which has close performance to the theoretical optimal one. Among 1000 stocks, for example, we are able to identify all optimal subsets of portfolios of different sizes, their associated allocation vectors, and their estimated risks. The utility of our new approach is illustrated by simulation and empirical studies on the 100 Fama-French industrial portfolios and the 400 stocks randomly selected from Russell 3000.
We propose a novel approach to infer investors risk preferences from their portfolio choices, and then use the implied risk preferences to measure the efficiency of investment portfolios. We analyze a dataset spanning a period of six years, consisting of end of month stock trading records, along with investors demographic information and self-assessed financial knowledge. Unlike estimates of risk aversion based on the share of risky assets, our statistical analysis suggests that the implied risk aversion coefficient of an investor increases with her wealth and financial literacy. Portfolio diversification, Sharpe ratio, and expected portfolio returns correlate positively with the efficiency of the portfolio, whereas a higher standard deviation reduces the efficiency of the portfolio. We find that affluent and financially educated investors as well as those holding retirement related accounts hold more efficient portfolios.
Portfolio management problems are often divided into two types: active and passive, where the objective is to outperform and track a preselected benchmark, respectively. Here, we formulate and solve a dynamic asset allocation problem that combines these two objectives in a unified framework. We look to maximize the expected growth rate differential between the wealth of the investors portfolio and that of a performance benchmark while penalizing risk-weighted deviations from a given tracking portfolio. Using stochastic control techniques, we provide explicit closed-form expressions for the optimal allocation and we show how the optimal strategy can be related to the growth optimal portfolio. The admissible benchmarks encompass the class of functionally generated portfolios (FGPs), which include the market portfolio, as the only requirement is that they depend only on the prevailing asset values. Finally, some numerical experiments are presented to illustrate the risk-reward profile of the optimal allocation.
The fundamental principle in Modern Portfolio Theory (MPT) is based on the quantification of the portfolios risk related to performance. Although MPT has made huge impacts on the investment world and prompted the success and prevalence of passive investing, it still has shortcomings in real-world applications. One of the main challenges is that the level of risk an investor can endure, known as emph{risk-preference}, is a subjective choice that is tightly related to psychology and behavioral science in decision making. This paper presents a novel approach of measuring risk preference from existing portfolios using inverse optimization on the mean-variance portfolio allocation framework. Our approach allows the learner to continuously estimate real-time risk preferences using concurrent observed portfolios and market price data. We demonstrate our methods on real market data that consists of 20 years of asset pricing and 10 years of mutual fund portfolio holdings. Moreover, the quantified risk preference parameters are validated with two well-known risk measurements currently applied in the field. The proposed methods could lead to practical and fruitful innovations in automated/personalized portfolio management, such as Robo-advising, to augment financial advisors decision intelligence in a long-term investment horizon.
We develop the idea of using Monte Carlo sampling of random portfolios to solve portfolio investment problems. In this first paper we explore the need for more general optimization tools, and consider the means by which constrained random portfolios may be generated. A practical scheme for the long-only fully-invested problem is developed and tested for the classic QP application. The advantage of Monte Carlo methods is that they may be extended to risk functions that are more complicated functions of the return distribution, and that the underlying return distribution may be computed without the classical Gaussian limitations. The optimization of quadratic risk-return functions, VaR, CVaR, may be handled in a similar manner to variability ratios such as Sortino and Omega, or mathematical constructions such as expected utility and its behavioural finance extensions. Robustification is also possible. Grid computing technology is an excellent platform for the development of such computations due to the intrinsically parallel nature of the computation, coupled to the requirement to transmit only small packets of data over the grid. We give some examples deploying GridMathematica, in which various investor risk preferences are optimized with differing multivariate distributions. Good comparisons with established results in Mean-Variance and CVaR optimization are obtained when ``edge-vertex-biased sampling methods are employed to create random portfolios. We also give an application to Omega optimization.
Systemic risk arises as a multi-layer network phenomenon. Layers represent direct financial exposures of various types, including interbank liabilities, derivative- or foreign exchange exposures. Another network layer of systemic risk emerges through common asset holdings of financial institutions. Strongly overlapping portfolios lead to similar exposures that are caused by price movements of the underlying financial assets. Based on the knowledge of portfolio holdings of financial agents we quantify systemic risk of overlapping portfolios. We present an optimization procedure, where we minimize the systemic risk in a given financial market by optimally rearranging overlapping portfolio networks, under the constraints that the expected returns and risks of the individual portfolios are unchanged. We explicitly demonstrate the power of the method on the overlapping portfolio network of sovereign exposure between major European banks by using data from the European Banking Authority stress test of 2016. We show that systemic-risk-efficient allocations are accessible by the optimization. In the case of sovereign exposure, systemic risk can be reduced by more than a factor of two, with- out any detrimental effects for the individual banks. These results are confirmed by a simple simulation of fire sales in the government bond market. In particular we show that the contagion probability is reduced dramatically in the optimized network.