Efficient Frontier (efficient + frontier)

Distribution by Scientific Domains


Selected Abstracts


Les hedge funds ont-ils leur place dans un portefeuille institutionnel canadien?

CANADIAN JOURNAL OF ADMINISTRATIVE SCIENCES, Issue 3 2003
Stéphanie Desrosiers
This article examines the return and risk of hedge funds (HF), and their correlations with traditional asset classes for the 1990,2002 period. Efficient frontiers resulting from optimizations with and without constraints demonstrate that it is worthwhile to include HF in a Canadian institutional investor's portfolio. HF offer a high potential return relative to risk, while weaker correlations with traditional asset classes create a beneficial diversification effect. Non-directional HF provide protection in bear markets and are more suitable for lower risk portfolios, whereas directional HF are better suited to higher risk portfolios. Caveats are necessary due to the skew-ness and kurtosis of the return distributions, potential biases in the return series, the lower liquidity, and the complexity of the HF industry. Résumé Cet article examine le rendement, le risque et les correélations des hedge funds (HF) avec les catégories d'actif traditionnelles sur la période 1990,2002. Des optimisations avec et sans contraintes montrent qu'il est avantageux d'inclure les HF dans un portefeuille institutionnel canadien du fait d'un potentiel de rendement élevé par rapport au risque encouru et de faibles corrélations. Les HF non-directionnels offrent une meilleure protection en marché baissier et sont plus appropriés pour des portefeuilles moins risqués. Les HF directionnels conviennent davantage aux portefeuilles prksentant un risque plus élevé. Des réserves doivent toutefois étre émises en raison des coefficients d'asymétrie et d'aplatissement de la distribution des rendements, des biais potentiels des données, de la faible liquidité, et de la complexité de l'industrie des HF. [source]


Creating Securities Markets in Developing Countries: A New Approach for the Age of Automated Trading

INTERNATIONAL FINANCE, Issue 2 2001
Benn Steil
The past decade has been one of enormous change in the securities trading industry. Automation of trading systems, led by the continental European exchanges and US ,electronic communications networks' (ECNs), has resulted in significant declines in trading costs, massive increases in turnover, internationalization of trading and settlement system operations, and major reforms in exchange governance. Yet the policy advice given to developing country governments looking to create or expand securitized finance in their markets has been largely unaffected by these developments. This is unfortunate, as developing countries now have the opportunity to leapfrog the evolving infrastructure of the mature markets and to define the global efficient frontier in trading technology, exchange governance, investor access and market structure regulation. This paper analyses the technological and economic forces driving change in the securities trading industry, and examines the implications for developing markets. [source]


Portfolio selection on the Madrid Exchange: a compromise programming model

INTERNATIONAL TRANSACTIONS IN OPERATIONAL RESEARCH, Issue 1 2003
E. Ballestero
As a contribution to portfolio selection analysis, we develop a compromise programming approach to the investor's utility optimum on the Madrid Online Market. This approach derives from linkages between utility functions under incomplete information, Yu's compromise set, and certain biased sets of portfolios on the efficient frontier. These linkages rely on recent theorems in multi,criteria literature, which allow us to approximate the investor's utility optimum between bounds which are determined either by linear programming models or graphic techniques. Returns on 104 stocks are computed from capital gains and cash,flows, including dividends and rights offerings, over the period 1992,1997. The first step consists in normalizing the mean,variance efficient frontier, which is defined in terms of two indexes, profitability and safety. In the second step, interactive dialogues to elicit the investor's preferences for profitability and safety are described. In the third step, the utility optimum for each particular investor who pursues a buy,&,hold policy is bounded on the efficient frontier. From this step, a number of portfolios close to the investor's utility optimum are obtained. In the fourth step, compromise programming is used again to select one ,satisficing' portfolio from the set already bounded for each investor. This step is new with respect to previous papers in which compromise/utility models are employed. Computing processes are detailed in tables and figures which also display the numerical results. Extensions to active management policies are suggested. [source]


CONTINUOUS-TIME MEAN-VARIANCE PORTFOLIO SELECTION WITH BANKRUPTCY PROHIBITION

MATHEMATICAL FINANCE, Issue 2 2005
Tomasz R. Bielecki
A continuous-time mean-variance portfolio selection problem is studied where all the market coefficients are random and the wealth process under any admissible trading strategy is not allowed to be below zero at any time. The trading strategy under consideration is defined in terms of the dollar amounts, rather than the proportions of wealth, allocated in individual stocks. The problem is completely solved using a decomposition approach. Specifically, a (constrained) variance minimizing problem is formulated and its feasibility is characterized. Then, after a system of equations for two Lagrange multipliers is solved, variance minimizing portfolios are derived as the replicating portfolios of some contingent claims, and the variance minimizing frontier is obtained. Finally, the efficient frontier is identified as an appropriate portion of the variance minimizing frontier after the monotonicity of the minimum variance on the expected terminal wealth over this portion is proved and all the efficient portfolios are found. In the special case where the market coefficients are deterministic, efficient portfolios are explicitly expressed as feedback of the current wealth, and the efficient frontier is represented by parameterized equations. Our results indicate that the efficient policy for a mean-variance investor is simply to purchase a European put option that is chosen, according to his or her risk preferences, from a particular class of options. [source]


Optimal Dynamic Portfolio Selection: Multiperiod Mean-Variance Formulation

MATHEMATICAL FINANCE, Issue 3 2000
Duan Li
The mean-variance formulation by Markowitz in the 1950s paved a foundation for modern portfolio selection analysis in a single period. This paper considers an analytical optimal solution to the mean-variance formulation in multiperiod portfolio selection. Specifically, analytical optimal portfolio policy and analytical expression of the mean-variance efficient frontier are derived in this paper for the multiperiod mean-variance formulation. An efficient algorithm is also proposed for finding an optimal portfolio policy to maximize a utility function of the expected value and the variance of the terminal wealth. [source]