We propose a novel portfolio selection approach that manages to ease some of the problems that characterise standard expected utility maximisation. The optimal portfolio is no longer defined as the extremum of a suitably chosen utility function: the latter, instead, is reinterpreted as the logarithm of a probability distribution for optimal portfolios and the selected portfolio is defined as the expected value with respect to this distribution. A further theoretical aspect is the adoption of a Bayesian inference framework. We find that this approach has several attractive features, when comparing it to the standard maximisation of expected utility. We remove the over-pronounced sensitivity on external parameters that plague optimisation procedures and obtain a natural and self consistent way to account for uncertainty in knowledge and for personal views. We test the proposed method against traditional expected utility maximisation, using artificial data to simulate finite-sample behaviour, and find superior performance of our procedure. All numerical integrals are carried out by using Markov Chain Monte Carlo, where the chains are generated by an adapted version of Hybrid Monte Carlo. We present numerical results for a portfolio of eight assets using historical time series running from January 1988 to January 2002.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
file. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
Publisher Info
Paper provided by EconWPA in its series Finance with number
0211003.
Length: 27 pages Date of creation: 19 Nov 2002 Date of revision:
28 Nov 2002 Handle: RePEc:wpa:wuwpfi:0211003
Note: Type of Document - Postscript; prepared on PC; to print on HP/PostScript/Franciscan monk; pages: 27 ; figures: within article. 27 pages, Postscript, figures included Contact details of provider: Web page: http://129.3.20.41
For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its listing, contact: (EconWPA).