IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/kud/kuiedp/0403.html

Survival of the Fittest on Wall Street

Author

Listed:
  • Thorsten Hens

    (University of Zurich)

  • Klaus Reiner Schenk-Hoppé

    (Institute of Economics, University of Copenhagen)

Abstract

This paper studies an application of a Darwinian theory of portfolio selection to stocks listed in the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA). We analyze numerically the long-run outcome of the competition of fix-mix portfolio rules in a stock market with actual DJIA dividends. In the model seemingly rational strategies can do very poorly against seemingly irrational strategies. Moreover, the interaction of strategies can lead to stochastic time series of asset prices that do not converge. The simulations also show that the evolutionary portfolio rule discovered in Hens and Schenk-Hopp´e (2004) will eventually hold total market wealth in competition with fix-mix portfolio rules derived from mean-variance optimization, maximum growth theory and behavioral finance. According to this evolutionary rule, portfolio weights should be proportional to the expected relative dividends of the assets. As an implication asset prices converge to expected relative dividends.

Suggested Citation

  • Thorsten Hens & Klaus Reiner Schenk-Hoppé, 2004. "Survival of the Fittest on Wall Street," Discussion Papers 04-03, University of Copenhagen. Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:kud:kuiedp:0403
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.econ.ku.dk/english/research/publications/wp/2004/0403.pdf/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. De Bondt, Werner F M & Thaler, Richard, 1985. "Does the Stock Market Overreact?," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 40(3), pages 793-805, July.
    2. De Long, J Bradford & Andrei Shleifer & Lawrence H. Summers & Robert J. Waldmann, 1990. "Noise Trader Risk in Financial Markets," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 98(4), pages 703-738, August.
    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. Igor V. EVSTIGNEEVY & Thorsten HENS & Klaus Reiner SCHENK-HOPPE, 2010. "An evolutionary financial market model with a risk-free asset," Swiss Finance Institute Research Paper Series 10-36, Swiss Finance Institute.
    2. Konstantinos Mavroudis & Craig A. Nolder, 2011. "Fixed-Mix Rules In An Evolutionary Market Using A Factor Model For Dividends," International Journal of Theoretical and Applied Finance (IJTAF), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 14(08), pages 1247-1277.
    3. Igor V. Evstigneev & Thorsten Hens & Klaus Reiner Schenk-Hoppé, 2008. "Evolutionary Finance," Swiss Finance Institute Research Paper Series 08-14, Swiss Finance Institute.

    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. Hou, Yang & Meng, Jiayin, 2018. "The momentum effect in the Chinese market and its relationship with the simultaneous and the lagged investor sentiment," MPRA Paper 94838, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    2. Stefano DellaVigna, 2009. "Psychology and Economics: Evidence from the Field," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 47(2), pages 315-372, June.
    3. Lawrence Choo & Todd R. Kaplan & Ro’i Zultan, 2019. "Information aggregation in Arrow–Debreu markets: an experiment," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 22(3), pages 625-652, September.
    4. David G. McMillan, 2003. "Non‐linear Predictability of UK Stock Market Returns," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 65(5), pages 557-573, December.
    5. Doran, James & Jiang, Danling & Peterson, David, 2007. "Short-Sale Constraints and the Non-January Idiosyncratic Volatility Puzzle," MPRA Paper 4995, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    6. Robert J. Shiller, 2003. "From Efficient Markets Theory to Behavioral Finance," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 17(1), pages 83-104, Winter.
    7. Ellahie, Atif, 2024. "Accounting for bubbles: A discussion of Arif and Sul (2024)," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 78(2).
    8. Michael Ehrmann & David-Jan Jansen, 2016. "It Hurts (Stock Prices) When Your Team is about to Lose a Soccer Match," Review of Finance, European Finance Association, vol. 20(3), pages 1215-1233.
    9. Adam Karp & Gary Van Vuuren, 2019. "Investment Implications Of The Fractal Market Hypothesis," Annals of Financial Economics (AFE), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 14(01), pages 1-27, March.
    10. Li Lin & Didier Sornette, 2009. "Diagnostics of Rational Expectation Financial Bubbles with Stochastic Mean-Reverting Termination Times," Papers 0911.1921, arXiv.org.
    11. Mark, Nelson C & Wu, Yangru, 1998. "Rethinking Deviations from Uncovered Interest Parity: The Role of Covariance Risk and Noise," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 108(451), pages 1686-1706, November.
    12. Giovanni Cespa & Xavier Vives, 2011. "Expectations, Liquidity, and Short-term Trading," CESifo Working Paper Series 3390, CESifo.
    13. Deven Bathia & Don Bredin & Dirk Nitzsche, 2016. "International Sentiment Spillovers in Equity Returns," International Journal of Finance & Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 21(4), pages 332-359, October.
    14. Daniel, Kent & Hirshleifer, David & Teoh, Siew Hong, 2002. "Investor psychology in capital markets: evidence and policy implications," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 49(1), pages 139-209, January.
    15. Robert S. Chirinko & Huntley Schaller, 2001. "Business Fixed Investment and "Bubbles": The Japanese Case," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 91(3), pages 663-680, June.
    16. Daniel Huerta & Peter V. Egly & Diego Escobari, 2016. "The Liquidity Crisis, Investor Sentiment, and REIT Returns and Volatility," Journal of Real Estate Portfolio Management, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 22(1), pages 47-62, January.
    17. Galanis, Giorgos & Kollias, Iraklis & Leventides, Ioanis & Lustenhouwer, Joep, 2025. "Generalizing heuristic switching models and a (boundedly) rational route away from randomness," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 177(C).
    18. Jank, Stephan & Roling, Christoph & Smajlbegovic, Esad, 2021. "Flying under the radar: The effects of short-sale disclosure rules on investor behavior and stock prices," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 139(1), pages 209-233.
    19. Fung, Scott & Obaid, Khaled & Tsai, Shih-Chuan, 2024. "Information acquisition and processing skills of institutions and retail investors around information shocks," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 77(C).
    20. Sobti, Neharika, 2025. "What triggers intraday price jumps and co-jumps in gold?," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 105(C).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • D52 - Microeconomics - - General Equilibrium and Disequilibrium - - - Incomplete Markets
    • D81 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Criteria for Decision-Making under Risk and Uncertainty
    • D83 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Search; Learning; Information and Knowledge; Communication; Belief; Unawareness
    • G11 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Portfolio Choice; Investment Decisions

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:kud:kuiedp:0403. 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: Thomas Hoffmann (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/okokudk.html .

    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.