The professional management of an investment portfolio of various securities (shares, bonds and other securities) in order to meet specified investment goals. The process includes the specification of investment objectives and constraints, choice of asset mix, formulation of portfolio strategy, ...
21
votes
9answers
6k views
Why does the minimum variance portfolio provide good returns?
I've been a researching minimum variance portfolios (from this link) and find that by building MVPs adding constraints on portfolio weights and a few other tweaks to the methods outlined I get ...
19
votes
6answers
3k views
What type of investor is willing to be short gamma?
As far as I understand, most investors are willing to buy options (puts and calls) in order to limit their exposure to the market in case it moves against them. This is due to the fact that they are ...
13
votes
1answer
540 views
Diversification, Rebalancing and Different Means
I have found many financial authors making generalizations about GM and AM but they are wrong in certain circumstances. Could someone explain their reasoning?
My fact why they are wrong is based ...
11
votes
5answers
1k views
portfolio optimisation with VaR (or CVaR) constraints
I would like to optimize a portfolio allocation (maximizing the exposure or the expected return), but with VaR or CVaR contraints. (some parts of my portfolio cannot exceed a certain VaR)
How can I ...
11
votes
3answers
790 views
10
votes
4answers
810 views
What books should any quantitative portfolio manager or risk manager have as reference? [closed]
I'm interested to know what are the critical reference texts you rely on for portfolio or risk management? I mean those texts that you come back to because they are chock full of insight and know-how. ...
10
votes
3answers
196 views
Does entropy pooling apply to distributions with time-varying drift?
I have a returns process that is drawn from a normal distribution with a nonlinear time-varying drift, so I was wondering if the entropy pooling method still applies or if I need an invariant ?
9
votes
3answers
934 views
Why do expected return models and risk models use different factors?
This is a question responding to weekly topic challenge. I happen to see an interesting question from SYMMYS by Michael Kapler.
I always approached expected return and risk modeling as separate
...
9
votes
2answers
1k views
How do I calculate the skewness of a portfolio of assets?
I need to calculate the skewness of a portfolio consisting of 6 assets. I know that for that I would need the co-skewness matrix between the assets. Does anybody know the formula for co-skewness or ...
9
votes
2answers
462 views
How to compute performance attribution between daily rebalanced strategies?
I have a daily rebalanced portfolio of several strategies.
After one month, I now want to attribute the performance to the different strategies. There are several ways to do it.
For instance one ...
9
votes
1answer
275 views
penalizing negative skewness by linking $U(\mu)$ and $U(\Sigma)$
Consider $U_1(\mu,\Sigma)$ and $U_2(\mu,\Sigma)$, where $U_1(\mu, \cdot) = U_2(\mu, \cdot)$, $U_1(\cdot, \Sigma) = U_2(\cdot, \Sigma)$ such that
\begin{equation*}
arg\inf\limits_{\mu \in U_1(\mu, ...
8
votes
3answers
668 views
Alternate money management strategies to Kelly?
Other than Kelly (or fractional derivatives), are there other money management strategies in wide use among quant funds? Certainly Kelly is mathematically optimal, but perhaps there are other ...
8
votes
2answers
491 views
Why do low standard deviation stocks tend to have superior future returns?
I've recently stumbled on something that really surprised me. These papers (1, 2) find that past standard deviation of returns is inversely related to future returns. That is, portfolio of low ...
7
votes
2answers
345 views
How to shift amongst asset classes in response to relative value views?
I am designing an asset allocation strategy/fund which invests in four asset classes (via four independent sub-funds):
Domestic equity
International equity
Domestic fixed income
Foreign currencies
...
6
votes
3answers
532 views
What position-sizing methods are used in futures trading?
Beyond optimal / partial f and a few other older methods, there's very little information out there for futures trading.
6
votes
3answers
337 views
Should the average investor hold commodities as part of a broadly diversified portfolio?
Many mutual funds sell "asset allocation" products which include appropriately sized investments in a variety of asset classes meant for a prototypical investor. Some of these, such as PIMCO, even ...
6
votes
2answers
1k views
robust portfolio optimization re-balancing with transaction costs
The optimal re-balancing strategy takes account of factors including i) objective function, ii) current portfolio weights, iii) expected return vector containing updated views/alpha forecasts, iv) ...
6
votes
2answers
421 views
Comparing MVO with Resampled Efficient Frontier
My question: How can I compare the Resampled Frontier (REF) to the standard MVO frontier when I have been provided with $\mu$, $\Omega$, and don't have access to true future data to test real out of ...
6
votes
1answer
602 views
How can I use Entropy-pooling of Atillio Meucci to constuct a portfolio?
I am trying to get my hands on Entropy Pooling which was introduced by Meucci in this paper.
As an example, assume I want to construct a portfolio with five stocks and I have my view on CVaR.
How ...
6
votes
1answer
313 views
How can I simulate portfolio risk (diversification) with a 'Wheel of Fortune' like investment options/returns?
Say I have 6 possible investment options with the following probability of success and the corresponding returns:
...
6
votes
2answers
465 views
optimal re-balancing strategy with asynchronous alpha signal
You want to construct an optimal portfolio.
Let's say you have an alpha signal that arrives with some period (say quarterly). The alpha signal predicts arithmetic returns one-year ahead. You have ...
6
votes
1answer
570 views
How to run an asset replication regression?
I am doing extensive research on portfolio replication and was hoping to get some help with some problems I am encountering.
I am running a regression between 2 assets that I believe replicate ...
6
votes
0answers
126 views
Optimization procedure for entropy pooling
I was wondering if those who used the entropy pooling code provided by Attilio Meucci had issues with the optimization procedure (especially regarding the fminunc function in Matlab). When I stress ...
5
votes
2answers
432 views
cointegration applied to Portfolio Construction & Risk management
There are all sorts of applications of cointegration to generating alpha on mean-reverting timeseries: comparing spot vs. futures, bond spreads, identifying mean-reverting residuals, etc.
But there ...
5
votes
1answer
324 views
Are there any tools or useful algos for identifying corner portfolios?
Let's say I am performing mean-variance optimization subject to some weight constraints.
I'd like to identify the set of corner portfolios so that I can interpolate the entire efficient frontier. A ...
5
votes
0answers
155 views
How to build an electricity portfolio for an electricity production company?
I am referring to an electricity production company. Company is located in AsiaPac. The power is generated using Natural Gas fired combined-cycle power plants. Then this electricity is distributed to ...
4
votes
3answers
283 views
Calculating the right portfolio(position size for each leg) in a Long/Short Strategy
For a Long/Short Strategy, I have two stocks with different volatilities. How can I calculate the right position size for each leg?
*The pair trading is not coming from co-integration but more as a ...
4
votes
1answer
526 views
Quant PMs need to know the following… [closed]
To the degree in which it's possible, I'd like to know what the community believes are the objective skills/knowledge required to run a successful Quant book.
I'm not interested in strategies, ...
4
votes
1answer
389 views
Robust Bayesian portfolio optimization in matlab?
I am working through this paper.
I want to implement the robust Bayesian optimization (see pages 6 onward) in Matlab using fmincon.
Here is a brief overview of my problem:
Let $\alpha$ be the ...
4
votes
0answers
155 views
Analyzing the angle between vector of weights and vector of returns in mean-variance optimization
I am using the paper "A Sharper Angle on Optimization" by Golts and Jones (2009) as a basis for my (minor) masters thesis in mathematical finance. The paper focuses on the mean-variance analysis of ...
3
votes
3answers
320 views
What is the case for active management?
A recent personal finance question asks when to hire an investment professional? Given that many of us here are on the professional manager side of the business, how would you make the case? What ...
3
votes
3answers
425 views
What are the limits of bond portfolio immunization against interest rate changes?
I'm currently reading through an article on bond portfolio immunization against changes in the interest rate.
I learned that the immunization can be done against instant changes in interest rate ...
3
votes
1answer
89 views
Desired portfolio volume
I am working on a toy model, in part of which an investor has to decide (based on some utility theory) how much money to invest in a given portfolio. For simplicity, assume that the portfolio is ...
3
votes
1answer
478 views
Risk-Parity Portfolio Optimization using Extreme Optimization in C#
I'm trying to create a risk-parity portfolio in C# using the Extreme Optimization routines.
I'm mostly trying them out to see if I like them or not before I buy them (I'm a student so money is ...
3
votes
1answer
403 views
Michaud's Resampled Efficient Frontier - Out of Sample Simulation Testing
I will be putting ALL my account points on bounty to whoever answers this question [if your answer is crap but it's the only answer, you're getting the 165 points]. You will have to wait 2 days or so ...
3
votes
0answers
92 views
Risk Budgets with Target Portfolio Volatility
I'm working through the implementation of a risk budgeting approach as described in the recent Roncalli paper. The idea is that the portfolio manager sets a contribution of total portfolio volatility ...
3
votes
0answers
190 views
Is there a standard method of scaling alpha forecasts to t-cost estimates?
Given a set of monthly alpha forecasts (i.e. standardized z-scores from a multi-factor return model) and a non-linear market impact model (or more specifically, its piecewise-linear approximation), is ...
2
votes
2answers
260 views
Determining portfolio risk return in R given historical data for individual holdings?
Currently we compute portfolio risk and return via our own C# program. Historical data is stored in a SQL database. We want to compute the risk and return parameters - given a portfolio (i.e. not ...
2
votes
2answers
285 views
constructing a minimum variance portfolio
Assume a US-based company has sold something to a Norwegian company. It will receive 1M Norwegian Kroner in two months, and would like to hedge this future cash flow against currency exchange risk.
...
2
votes
2answers
2k views
Calculating Portfolio Skewness & Kurtosis
I need to calculate the skewness and kurtosis of 2 asset portfolio, can someone please help me with the formulas and definition of terms? Thank you.
I have been using the matrices method and I am not ...
2
votes
3answers
261 views
Optimizing a currency only portfolio with negative weights
I am testing various optimization methods for a currency-only portfolio. I have a vector of expected returns for the major developed currencies vs. the USD each week (based on a proprietary model). I ...
2
votes
3answers
453 views
Can I perform an asset allocation optimization if assets are perfectly uncorrelated?
(Here is a link to the original post)
I received this interesting problem from a friend today:
Assume that you are a portfolio manager with $10 million to allocate to hedge funds. The due diligence ...
2
votes
2answers
182 views
Calculating Geometric mean
I need to annualize daily returns for about 120 firms for over a period of 10 years. I chose to calculate the geometric return because 1) it is the actual return 2) to avoid the asymmetric effect of ...
2
votes
2answers
112 views
Portfolio risk-return when assets have limited and inconsistent historical data / time series?
Lets say we have "today's" snapshot of asset allocation and need to determine the 6mo, 1 yr and 5 yr risk and returns of this portfolio. If the time series for every asset is very long, longer than ...
2
votes
1answer
303 views
Using alpha to evaluate trading strategy
I have a trading strategy that generates returns $R_{t}$. I want to test the strategy by looking at the alpha:
$R_t - R_{f,t} = \alpha + \beta (R_{m,t} - R_{f,t}) + e_t$
I compare my alpha against ...
2
votes
1answer
367 views
Modelling VIX Futures for risk management
I would like to model VIX futures. The aim is not pricing but risk management. Thus I want to get risk measures like volatility right and be able to accurately calculate correlations when the VIX ...
2
votes
1answer
169 views
How to quantify the impact of management cost on return?
Suppose funds X and Y are the same but X has 0.25% higher management cost. Suppose we are analyzing a 2 year interval. The simple models with discrete/continuous interval -assumptions are not really ...
2
votes
0answers
77 views
How to correctly construct a value- and equally weighted portfolio consisting of property-types?
A problem of which I couldn’t find the answer on the forum is about the construction of equally-weighted and value-weighted portfolio.
I want to compute the equally-weighted property-type portfolio ...
2
votes
0answers
109 views
How to Quantify Headwinds
What are some of the best ways to effectively measure headwinds for an open ended fund? Headwinds in this case refers to the amount of volatility contributed by a factor or a set of factors to a ...
1
vote
1answer
695 views
Calculating portfolio allocation beta with different asset classes?
I'd like to calculate portfolio allocation beta on a portfolio that has different asset classes. The portfolio may be made up of:
...
