IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/kap/fmktpm/v33y2019i2d10.1007_s11408-019-00329-0.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Thematic portfolio optimization: challenging the core satellite approach

Author

Listed:
  • Florian Methling

    (RWTH Aachen University)

  • Rüdiger Nitzsch

    (RWTH Aachen University)

Abstract

In recent years, thematic exchange-traded funds (ETF) have increased in economic significance. Investors in thematic ETFs have more than just financial objectives and gain a non-monetary added value from a thematic portion in their portfolios. Therefore, traditional portfolio optimization models which target only financial criteria cannot suit these investors’ needs anymore. Nevertheless, to account for their thematic interests, investors adapt a core satellite strategy in which conventional core portfolios and thematic satellite portfolios are combined. Thus, these portfolios are separately optimized without further considering inter-portfolio correlation effects. Since modern portfolio theory has originally been established to, inter alia, optimize these correlation effects, portfolios can only be efficient by chance. Therefore, this study targets the correlation effects between conventional and thematic portfolios and uses a tri-criterion thematic portfolio optimization model as an overall framework. Throughout a two-part analysis with tradable ETFs and a simulation with 250,000 draws and 1,750,000 portfolio optimizations performed, the status quo is compared to the tri-criterion model. Quantifying the suboptimality, simulation results show a mean portfolio improvement of 6.23% measured as relative yield enhancement. Further, our analysis concludes that the more narrowly a theme is defined and the more particular it is, relative yield enhancements can increase up to 46.88%.

Suggested Citation

  • Florian Methling & Rüdiger Nitzsch, 2019. "Thematic portfolio optimization: challenging the core satellite approach," Financial Markets and Portfolio Management, Springer;Swiss Society for Financial Market Research, vol. 33(2), pages 133-154, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:kap:fmktpm:v:33:y:2019:i:2:d:10.1007_s11408-019-00329-0
    DOI: 10.1007/s11408-019-00329-0
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11408-019-00329-0
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s11408-019-00329-0?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Ehrgott, Matthias & Klamroth, Kathrin & Schwehm, Christian, 2004. "An MCDM approach to portfolio optimization," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 155(3), pages 752-770, June.
    2. Webley, Paul & Lewis, Alan & Mackenzie, Craig, 2001. "Commitment among ethical investors: An experimental approach," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 22(1), pages 27-42, February.
    3. Barberis, Nicholas & Thaler, Richard, 2003. "A survey of behavioral finance," Handbook of the Economics of Finance, in: G.M. Constantinides & M. Harris & R. M. Stulz (ed.), Handbook of the Economics of Finance, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 18, pages 1053-1128, Elsevier.
    4. Lewis, Alan, 2001. "A focus group study of the motivation to invest: 'ethical/green' and 'ordinary' investors compared," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 30(4), pages 331-341.
    5. Bastien Drut, 2010. "Social responsibility and mean-variance portfolio selection," Working Papers CEB 10-002.RS, ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles.
    6. Utz, Sebastian & Wimmer, Maximilian & Steuer, Ralph E., 2015. "Tri-criterion modeling for constructing more-sustainable mutual funds," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 246(1), pages 331-338.
    7. Ralph Steuer & Yue Qi & Markus Hirschberger, 2007. "Suitable-portfolio investors, nondominated frontier sensitivity, and the effect of multiple objectives on standard portfolio selection," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 152(1), pages 297-317, July.
    8. Utz, Sebastian & Wimmer, Maximilian & Hirschberger, Markus & Steuer, Ralph E., 2014. "Tri-criterion inverse portfolio optimization with application to socially responsible mutual funds," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 234(2), pages 491-498.
    9. Gasser, Stephan M. & Rammerstorfer, Margarethe & Weinmayer, Karl, 2017. "Markowitz revisited: Social portfolio engineering," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 258(3), pages 1181-1190.
    10. Anand, Paul & Cowton, Christopher J., 1993. "The ethical investor: Exploring dimensions of investment behaviour," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 14(2), pages 377-385, June.
    11. Keeney,Ralph L. & Raiffa,Howard, 1993. "Decisions with Multiple Objectives," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521438834.
    12. Stone, Bernell K., 1973. "A Linear Programming Formulation of the General Portfolio Selection Problemâ€," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 8(4), pages 621-636, September.
    13. Baker, H Kent & Haslem, John A, 1974. "Toward the Development of Client-Specified Valuation Models," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 29(4), pages 1255-1263, September.
    14. Spronk, Jaap & Hallerbach, Winfried, 1997. "Financial modelling: Where to go? With an illustration for portfolio management," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 99(1), pages 113-125, May.
    15. Ralph E. Steuer & Yue Qi & Markus Hirschberger, 2008. "Portfolio Selection in the Presence of Multiple Criteria," Springer Optimization and Its Applications, in: Constantin Zopounidis & Michael Doumpos & Panos M. Pardalos (ed.), Handbook of Financial Engineering, pages 3-24, Springer.
    16. Markus Hirschberger & Ralph E. Steuer & Sebastian Utz & Maximilian Wimmer & Yue Qi, 2013. "Computing the Nondominated Surface in Tri-Criterion Portfolio Selection," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 61(1), pages 169-183, February.
    17. Carlos Bana & E. Costa & Joao Oliveira Soares, 2004. "A multicriteria model for portfolio management," The European Journal of Finance, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 10(3), pages 198-211.
    18. Ballestero, Enrique & Bravo, Mila & Pérez-Gladish, Blanca & Arenas-Parra, Mar & Plà-Santamaria, David, 2012. "Socially Responsible Investment: A multicriteria approach to portfolio selection combining ethical and financial objectives," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 216(2), pages 487-494.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Christoph J. Börner & Ingo Hoffmann & Jonas Krettek & Tim Schmitz, 2022. "Bitcoin: like a satellite or always hardcore? A core–satellite identification in the cryptocurrency market," Journal of Asset Management, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 23(4), pages 310-321, July.
    2. Florian Methling & Rüdiger Nitzsch, 2019. "Naïve diversification in thematic investing: heuristics for the core satellite investor," Journal of Asset Management, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 20(7), pages 568-580, December.
    3. Christoph J. Borner & Ingo Hoffmann & Jonas Krettek & Lars M. Kurzinger & Tim Schmitz, 2021. "Bitcoin: Like a Satellite or Always Hardcore? A Core-Satellite Identification in the Cryptocurrency Market," Papers 2105.12336, arXiv.org.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Florian Methling & Rüdiger Nitzsch, 2020. "Tailor-made thematic portfolios: a core satellite optimization," Journal of Global Optimization, Springer, vol. 76(2), pages 317-331, February.
    2. A. Garcia-Bernabeu & J. V. Salcedo & A. Hilario & D. Pla-Santamaria & Juan M. Herrero, 2019. "Computing the Mean-Variance-Sustainability Nondominated Surface by ev-MOGA," Complexity, Hindawi, vol. 2019, pages 1-12, December.
    3. Yue Qi & Ralph E. Steuer & Maximilian Wimmer, 2017. "An analytical derivation of the efficient surface in portfolio selection with three criteria," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 251(1), pages 161-177, April.
    4. Constantin Zopounidis & Michael Doumpos, 2013. "Multicriteria decision systems for financial problems," TOP: An Official Journal of the Spanish Society of Statistics and Operations Research, Springer;Sociedad de Estadística e Investigación Operativa, vol. 21(2), pages 241-261, July.
    5. Yue Qi, 2018. "On outperforming social-screening-indexing by multiple-objective portfolio selection," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 267(1), pages 493-513, August.
    6. P Xidonas & G Mavrotas & J Psarras, 2010. "A multiple criteria decision-making approach for the selection of stocks," Journal of the Operational Research Society, Palgrave Macmillan;The OR Society, vol. 61(8), pages 1273-1287, August.
    7. Yue Qi, 2022. "Classifying the minimum-variance surface of multiple-objective portfolio selection for capital asset pricing models," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 311(2), pages 1203-1227, April.
    8. Qi, Yue & Liao, Kezhi & Liu, Tongyang & Zhang, Yu, 2022. "Originating multiple-objective portfolio selection by counter-COVID measures and analytically instigating robust optimization by mean-parameterized nondominated paths," Operations Research Perspectives, Elsevier, vol. 9(C).
    9. Florian Methling & Rüdiger Nitzsch, 2019. "Naïve diversification in thematic investing: heuristics for the core satellite investor," Journal of Asset Management, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 20(7), pages 568-580, December.
    10. Yue Qi, 2017. "On the criterion vectors of lines of portfolio selection with multiple quadratic and multiple linear objectives," Central European Journal of Operations Research, Springer;Slovak Society for Operations Research;Hungarian Operational Research Society;Czech Society for Operations Research;Österr. Gesellschaft für Operations Research (ÖGOR);Slovenian Society Informatika - Section for Operational Research;Croatian Operational Research Society, vol. 25(1), pages 145-158, March.
    11. Nomeda Dobrovolskienė & Rima Tamošiūnienė, 2016. "Sustainability-Oriented Financial Resource Allocation in a Project Portfolio through Multi-Criteria Decision-Making," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 8(5), pages 1-18, May.
    12. K. Liagkouras & K. Metaxiotis & G. Tsihrintzis, 2022. "Incorporating environmental and social considerations into the portfolio optimization process," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 316(2), pages 1493-1518, September.
    13. Amelia Bilbao-Terol & Mar Arenas-Parra & Verónica Cañal-Fernández & Celia Bilbao-Terol, 2016. "Multi-criteria decision making for choosing socially responsible investment within a behavioral portfolio theory framework: a new way of investing into a crisis environment," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 247(2), pages 549-580, December.
    14. Gregor Dorfleitner & Mai Nguyen, 2017. "A new approach for optimizing responsible investments dependently on the initial wealth," Journal of Asset Management, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 18(2), pages 81-98, March.
    15. Calvo, Clara & Ivorra, Carlos & Liern, Vicente, 2015. "Finding socially responsible portfolios close to conventional ones," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 40(C), pages 52-63.
    16. Panagiotis Xidonas & George Mavrotas & John Psarras, 2010. "Equity portfolio construction and selection using multiobjective mathematical programming," Journal of Global Optimization, Springer, vol. 47(2), pages 185-209, June.
    17. Mónica García-Melón & Blanca Pérez-Gladish & Tomás Gómez-Navarro & Paz Mendez-Rodriguez, 2016. "Assessing mutual funds’ corporate social responsibility: a multistakeholder-AHP based methodology," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 244(2), pages 475-503, September.
    18. Dominique Diouf & Tessa Hebb & El Hadji Touré, 2016. "Exploring Factors that Influence Social Retail Investors’ Decisions: Evidence from Desjardins Fund," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 134(1), pages 45-67, March.
    19. Utz, Sebastian & Wimmer, Maximilian & Steuer, Ralph E., 2015. "Tri-criterion modeling for constructing more-sustainable mutual funds," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 246(1), pages 331-338.
    20. Steuer, Ralph E. & Utz, Sebastian, 2023. "Non-contour efficient fronts for identifying most preferred portfolios in sustainability investing," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 306(2), pages 742-753.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Portfolio management; Thematic investing; Portfolio optimization; Finance; Multiple criteria analysis;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • G11 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Portfolio Choice; Investment Decisions
    • G24 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services - - - Investment Banking; Venture Capital; Brokerage
    • G4 - Financial Economics - - Behavioral Finance

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:kap:fmktpm:v:33:y:2019:i:2:d:10.1007_s11408-019-00329-0. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.