IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/wly/revfec/v19y2010i4p161-178.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

A historical examination of optimal real return portfolios for non‐US investors

Author

Listed:
  • Salvatore Bruno
  • Ludwig Chincarini

Abstract

The objective of this paper is to explore and identify inflation as it is embedded in a broad range of asset classes beyond simply TIPS, oil, gold and real estate. The analysis is conducted primarily from the perspective of investors in a range of countries that span the developed and emerging world including resource intense economies and those that have previously experienced hyperinflation. We find that an investor who is looking for a reasonable positive real return of 4.5% while minimizing the downside risk with respect to inflation will have an allocation that consists primarily of short‐term bonds, longer‐term bonds, some gold, some oil, and some emerging market equities. The weight of gold and oil together is less than 10% of the portfolio and is not always relevant for all countries. We find that achieving stable real returns during hyperinflationary periods is virtually impossible without access to a vast array of short‐term fixed income instruments. Despite this, the out‐of‐sample performance of the real return optimizations is quite promising, providing an emulative inflation protection strategy for international investors of all sorts.

Suggested Citation

  • Salvatore Bruno & Ludwig Chincarini, 2010. "A historical examination of optimal real return portfolios for non‐US investors," Review of Financial Economics, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 19(4), pages 161-178, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:wly:revfec:v:19:y:2010:i:4:p:161-178
    DOI: 10.1016/j.rfe.2010.06.002
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rfe.2010.06.002
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.rfe.2010.06.002?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
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Bakshi, Gurdip S & Chen, Zhiwu, 1996. "Inflation, Asset Prices, and the Term Structure of Interest Rates in Monetary Economies," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 9(1), pages 241-275.
    2. Bai, Ye & Green, Christopher J., 2010. "International diversification strategies: Revisited from the risk perspective," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 34(1), pages 236-245, January.
    3. Lamont, Owen A., 2001. "Economic tracking portfolios," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 105(1), pages 161-184, November.
    4. Hess, Patrick J & Lee, Bong-Soo, 1999. "Stock Returns and Inflation with Supply and Demand Disturbances," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 12(5), pages 1203-1218.
    5. Hendershott, Patric H, 1981. "The Decline in Aggregate Share Values: Taxation, Valuation Errors, Risk and Profitability," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 71(5), pages 909-922, December.
    6. Brennan, Michael J. & Xia, Yihong, 2000. "Dynamic Asset Allocation under Inflation," University of California at Los Angeles, Anderson Graduate School of Management qt8p95456t, Anderson Graduate School of Management, UCLA.
    7. Driessen, Joost & Laeven, Luc, 2007. "International portfolio diversification benefits: Cross-country evidence from a local perspective," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 31(6), pages 1693-1712, June.
    8. Campbell, John Y & Ammer, John, 1993. "What Moves the Stock and Bond Markets? A Variance Decomposition for Long-Term Asset Returns," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 48(1), pages 3-37, March.
    9. Alexander, Gordon J. & Baptista, Alexandre M., 2006. "Portfolio selection with a drawdown constraint," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 30(11), pages 3171-3189, November.
    10. Barry V. Cozier & Abdul H. Rahman, 1988. "Stock Returns, Inflation, and Real Activity in Canada," Canadian Journal of Economics, Canadian Economics Association, vol. 21(4), pages 759-774, November.
    11. You, Leyuan & Daigler, Robert T., 2010. "Is international diversification really beneficial?," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 34(1), pages 163-173, January.
    12. Bahram Adrangi & Arjun Chatrath & Todd M. Shank, 1999. "Inflation, output and stock prices: evidence from Latin America," Managerial and Decision Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 20(2), pages 63-74.
    13. Bodie, Zvi, 1976. "Common Stocks as a Hedge against Inflation," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 31(2), pages 459-470, May.
    14. Hunter, Delroy M. & Simon, David P., 2005. "Are TIPS the "real" deal?: A conditional assessment of their role in a nominal portfolio," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 29(2), pages 347-368, February.
    15. Jayendu Patel & Richard J. Zeckhauser, 1987. "Treasury Bill Futures as Hedges Against Inflation Risk," NBER Working Papers 2322, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    16. Rapach, David E. & Wohar, Mark E., 2009. "Multi-period portfolio choice and the intertemporal hedging demands for stocks and bonds: International evidence," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 28(3), pages 427-453, April.
    17. Stulz, Rene M, 1986. "Asset Pricing and Expected Inflation," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 41(1), pages 209-223, March.
    18. Titman, Sheridan & Warga, Arthur, 1989. "Stock Returns as Predictors of Interest Rates and Inflation," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 24(1), pages 47-58, March.
    19. Simon Hayes, 2001. "Leading indicator information in UK equity prices: an assessment of economic tracking portfolios," Bank of England working papers 137, Bank of England.
    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. Jain, Prachi & Maitra, Debasish & McIver, Ron P. & Kang, Sang Hoon, 2023. "Quantile dependencies and connectedness between stock and precious metals markets," Journal of Commodity Markets, Elsevier, vol. 30(C).
    2. Rana, Hafiz Muhammad Usman & O'Connor, Fergal, 2023. "Domestic macroeconomic determinants of precious metals prices in developed and emerging economies: An international analysis of the long and short run," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 89(C).

    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. Bruno, Salvatore & Chincarini, Ludwig, 2010. "A historical examination of optimal real return portfolios for non-US investors," Review of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 19(4), pages 161-178, October.
    2. Lee, Bong Soo, 2010. "Stock returns and inflation revisited: An evaluation of the inflation illusion hypothesis," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 34(6), pages 1257-1273, June.
    3. Lizardo, Radhamés A. & Mollick, André V., 2009. "Do foreign purchases of U.S. stocks help the U.S. stock market?," Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions and Money, Elsevier, vol. 19(5), pages 969-986, December.
    4. Shu‐Chin Lin, 2009. "Inflation And Real Stock Returns Revisited," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 47(4), pages 783-795, October.
    5. Martin Hoesli & Colin Lizieri & Bryan MacGregor, 2008. "The Inflation Hedging Characteristics of US and UK Investments: A Multi-Factor Error Correction Approach," The Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics, Springer, vol. 36(2), pages 183-206, February.
    6. Brown, William O. & Huang, Dayong & Wang, Fang, 2016. "Inflation illusion and stock returns," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 35(C), pages 14-24.
    7. Junttila, Juha, 2007. "Forecasting the macroeconomy with contemporaneous financial market information: Europe and the United States," Review of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 16(2), pages 149-175.
    8. Spierdijk, Laura & Umar, Zaghum, 2015. "Stocks, bonds, T-bills and inflation hedging: From great moderation to great recession," Journal of Economics and Business, Elsevier, vol. 79(C), pages 1-37.
    9. N. Groenewold, 2000. "Financial Deregulation and the Relationship Between the Economy and the Share Market in Australia," Economics Discussion / Working Papers 00-10, The University of Western Australia, Department of Economics.
    10. Doron Nissim & Stephen H. Penman, 2003. "The Association between Changes in Interest Rates, Earnings, and Equity Values," Contemporary Accounting Research, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 20(4), pages 775-804, December.
    11. N. Groenewold, 2000. "Fundamental Share Prices and Aggregate Real Output," Economics Discussion / Working Papers 00-05, The University of Western Australia, Department of Economics.
    12. Martin Hoesli & Colin Lizieri & Bryan MacGregor, 2006. "The Inflation Hedging Characteristics of US and UK Investments:Â A Multi-Factor Error Correction Approach," Real Estate & Planning Working Papers rep-wp2006-01, Henley Business School, University of Reading.
    13. Topaloglou, Nikolas & Vladimirou, Hercules & Zenios, Stavros A., 2011. "Optimizing international portfolios with options and forwards," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 35(12), pages 3188-3201.
    14. John A. Tatom, 2011. "Inflation and Asset Prices," NFI Working Papers 2011-WP-26, Indiana State University, Scott College of Business, Networks Financial Institute.
    15. Karagianni Stella & Kyrtsou Catherine, 2011. "Analysing the Dynamics between U.S. Inflation and Dow Jones Index Using Non-Linear Methods," Studies in Nonlinear Dynamics & Econometrics, De Gruyter, vol. 15(2), pages 1-25, March.
    16. Lamont, Owen A., 2001. "Economic tracking portfolios," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 105(1), pages 161-184, November.
    17. Harjoat S. Bhamra & Christian Dorion & Alexandre Jeanneret & Michael Weber, 2018. "Low Inflation: High Default Risk AND High Equity Valuations," NBER Working Papers 25317, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    18. Gwangheon Hong & Bong Lee, 2013. "Does Inflation Illusion Explain the Relation between REITs and Inflation?," The Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics, Springer, vol. 47(1), pages 123-151, July.
    19. Steven A. Sharpe, 1999. "Stock prices, expected returns, and inflation," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 1999-02, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    20. Konrad Farrugia & Janice Duca & Peter J. Baldacchino & Simon Grima, 2021. "The Relationship between Inflation and Stock Returns in a Small Island State: An Analysis," International Journal of Finance, Insurance and Risk Management, International Journal of Finance, Insurance and Risk Management, vol. 11(2), pages 51-78.

    More about this item

    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:wly:revfec:v:19:y:2010:i:4:p:161-178. 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: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://doi.org/10.1002/(ISSN)1873-5924 .

    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.