Academic literature on the topic 'Modern Portfolio Theory'

Includes bibliographical references.<br>Fund managers and investors are confronted with the problem of selecting a single investment portfolio from a large number of possible combinations of available assets. In South Africa the set of possible portfolios has become even larger with the gradual relaxing of the constraints on foreign investment from 1995 to the present day, thereby expanding the investment universe for South African investors. Moreover, portfolio selection in South Africa is being transformed increasingly from being the exclusive domain of high net worth individuals, trustees and their investment managers to being the domain and responsibility of the man on the street. The Unit Trust industry started in South Africa in 1965 and gave the lower net worth individual a vehicle with which to invest in a diverse investment portfolio. This industry has proved very popular and has expanded from only 8 funds in 1980 to 338 funds and 136 billion rands under management in November 2000. Moreover the past two years, 1999 and 2000, has seen a change in the pension fund industry from defined benefit (DB) to defined contribution (DC) pension funds, transferring more of the risk and the responsibility of portfolio selection onto pension fund members. With increasing demand for fund management and investment advice by pension fund members and individual investors alike, the financial services industry in South Africa has also expanded. The consequent competition for assets of all descriptions have led, one hopes, to a more efficient market in equity, fixed income and derivative products. Thus modern portfolio theory has come a long way and will have to go further in meeting the demand to assist investors in their decision making.

<p>There are several authors Markowitz (1991), Elton and Gruber (1997) that discuss the main issues that an investor faces when investing, for example how to allocate resources among the variety of different securities. These issues have led to the discussion of portfolio theories, especially the Modern Portfolio Theory (MPT), which is developed by Nobel Prize awarded economist Harry Markowitz. This theory is the philosophical opposite of tradi-tional asset picking.</p><p>The purpose of this thesis is to investigate if an investor can apply MPT in order to achieve a higher return than investing in an index portfolio. Combining a strong portfolio that beats the market in the longrun would be the ultimate goal for most investors.</p><p>The theories that are used to analyze the problem and the empirical findings provide the essential concepts such as standard deviation, risk and return of the portfolio. Further, diversification, correlation and covariance are used to achieve the optimal risky portfolio. There will be a walk-through of the MPT, with the efficient frontier as the graphical guide to express the optimal risky portfolio.</p><p>The methodology constitutes as the frame for the thesis. The quantitative method is used since the data input is gathered from historical data. This thesis is based on existing theories, and the deductive approach aims to use these theories in order to accomplish a valid and accurate analysis. The benchmark that is used to compare the results from the portfolio is the Stockholm stock exchange OMX 30. This index mimics and reflects the market as a whole. The portfolio will be reweighed at a preplanned schedule, each quarter to constantly obtain an optimal risky portfolio.</p><p>The finding from this study indicates that the actively managed portfolio outperforms the passive benchmark during the selected timeframe. The outcome someway differs when evaluating the risk adjusted result and becomes less significant. The risk adjusted result does not provide any strong evidence for a greater return than index. Finally, with this finding, the authors can conclude by stating that an actively managed optimal risky portfolio with guidance of the MPT can surpass the OMX 30 within the selected timeframe.</p>

Portfolio diversification has been a subject frequently addressed since the publications of Markowitz in 1952 and 1959. However, the Modern Portfolio Theory and its mean variance framework have been criticized. The critiques refer to the assumptions that return distributions are normally distributed and the symmetric definition of risk. This paper elaborates on these short comings and applies a heuristic downside risk approach to avoid the pitfalls inherent in the mean variance framework. The result of the downside risk approach is compared and contrasted with the result of the mean variance framework. The return data refers to the real estate sector in Sweden and diversification is reached through property type and geographical location. The result reveals that diversification is reached differently between the two approaches. The downside risk measure applied here frequently diversifies successfully with use of fewer proxies. The efficient portfolios derived also reveals that the downside risk approach would have contributed to a historically higher average total return. This paper outlines a framework for portfolio diversification, the result is empirical and further research is needed in order to grasp the potential of the downside risk measures.

The thesis provides a comparison of different portfolio models and tests their performance on the financial markets. Our analysis particularly focuses on comparison of the classical Markowitz modern portfolio theory and the downside risk models of the post-modern portfolio theory. In addition, we consider some alternative portfolio models ending with total eleven models that we test. If the performance of different portfolio models should be evaluated and compared correctly, we must use a measure that is unbiased to any portfolio theory. We suggest solving this issue via a new approach based on the utility theory and utility functions. We introduce the unbiased method for evaluation of the portfolio model performance using the expected utility efficient frontier. We use the asymmetric behavioural utility function to capture the behaviour of the real market investors. The Markowitz model is the leading market practice. We investigate whether there are any circumstances in which some other models might provide better performance than the Markowitz model. Our research is for three reasons unique. First, it provides a comprehensive comparison of broad classes of different portfolio models. Second, we focus on the developed markets in United States and Germany but also on the local emerging markets in Czech Republic and Poland. These local markets have never been tested in such extent before. Third, the empirical testing is based on the broad data set from 2003 to 2012 which enable us to test how different portfolio model perform in different macroeconomic conditions.

This study examines whether modern portfolio theory can be used to improve the Magic Formula investment strategy. With the assets picked by the investment strategy we modify the portfolios by weighting the portfolios in accordance with modern portfolio theory. Through the process of creating efficient frontiers and weighting the portfolios differently we create two alternative portfolios each year. One portfolio that aimsfor maximum Sharpe ratio and one that aims for minimum variance. These weighted portfolios produce higher risk-adjusted returns consistently during the examined period of 2010-2020. We conclude that the Magic Formula can be improved by using modern portfolio theory.

<p>There is a big interest for alternative investment strategies than investing in traditional asset classes. Commodities are having a boom dynamic with increasing prices. This thesis is therefore based on applying Modern Portfolio Theory concept to this alternative asset class.</p><p>In this paper we manage to create optimal portfolios of commodities for investors with known and unknown risk preferences. When comparing expected returns to actual returns we found that for the investor with the known risk preference almost replicated the return of the markets. The other investor with unknown risk preference also profited but not as efficient as the market portfolio.</p>

In an ever-changing global environment, the ability to adapt to the current economic climate is essential for a company to prosper and survive. Numerous previous re- search state that better risk management and low overall risks will lead to a higher firm value. The purpose of this study is to examine if portfolio theory, made for fi- nancial portfolios, can be used to compose product portfolios in order to minimize risk and optimize returns. The term contingent hedge is defined as an optimal portfolio that can be identified today, that in the future will yield a stable stream of returns at a low level of risk. For companies that might engage in costly hedging activities on the futures market, the benefits of creat- ing a contingent hedge are several. These include creating an optimized portfolio that minimizes risk and avoid trading contracts on futures markets that would incur hefty transaction costs and risks. Using quantitative financial models, product portfolio compositions are generated and compared with the returns and risks profile of individual commodities, as well as the actual product portfolio compositions of publicly traded mining companies. Us- ing Modern Portfolio Theory an efficient frontier is generated, yielding two inde- pendent portfolios, the minimum risk portfolio and the tangency portfolio. The Black-Litterman model is also used to generate yet another portfolio using a Bayesian approach. The portfolios are generated by historic time-series data and compared with the actual future development of commodities; the portfolios are then analyzed and compared. The results indicate that the minimum risk portfolio provides a signif- icantly lower risk than the compositions of all mining companies in the study, as well as the risks of individual commodities. This in turn will lead to several benefits for company management and the firm’s shareholders that are discussed throughout the study. However, as for a return-optimizing portfolio, no significant results can be found. Furthermore, the analysis suggests a series of improvements that could potentially yield an even greater result. The recommendation is that mining companies can use the methods discussed throughout this study as a way to generate a costless contin- gent hedge, rather than engage in hedging activities on futures markets.

Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited<br>The basic research question guiding this thesis is: "How can Modern Portfolio Theory (MPT) be defensibly applied to DoD Information Technology (IT) portfolio optimization problems?" The research will demonstrate how to derive the appropriate raw performance, volatility data, required to remain consistent with MPT assumptions and methodology. This thesis accomplishes this research objective by establishing a notional IT beta to apply a MPT approach for asset allocation within the Department of Defense (DoD). Data from three previous RFID implementation case studies were used, where the Knowledge Value Added (KVA) methodology was applied to estimate the return on investment (ROI) produced by IT. The KVA methodology is essential for the application of this thesis because it provides the framework for the allocation of surrogate revenue and cost streams into core processes where RFID technology was implemented. The ROI estimates of volatility act as a surrogate for equity price volatility, allowing application of the Modern Portfolio Theory (MPT) approach in the nonprofit sector.

Mestrado em Finanças<br>Neste trabalho, comparamos as carteiras tangentes e carteiras de risco mínimo obtidas com a teoria moderna da carteira (MPT) e a teoria pós-moderna da carteira (PMPT) com o propósito de analisar as diferenças na seleção de ações. Baseamos o nosso estudo num conjunto de 16 ações do índice EURO STOXX 50 e estimamos os inputs com dados históricos entre 1997 e 2015. Para medir o risco na PMPT, usamos a semivariância em relação a três retornos alvo - 0, a taxa de juro sem risco e a taxa de retorno do mercado bolsista Europeu. Para atestar a robustez dos resultados, replicamos a análise estimando os inputs a partir de modelos de equilíbrio. Observamos que as carteiras da PMPT escolhem ações que exibem uma distribuição de retorno com assimetria positiva e/ou leptocúrtica. Adicionalmente, a composição destas carteiras privilegia ações com baixa semivariância, caracterizada por baixa frequência de retornos inferiores ao retorno alvo e/ou baixo desvio médio.<br>In this work, we compare tangent portfolios and minimum risk portfolios derived from the modern portfolio theory (MPT) and the post-modern portfolio theory (PMPT) to analyse the differences in stock selection. We base our study on a set of 16 stocks included in the EURO STOXX 50 index and estimate inputs from historical data since 1997 until 2015. To measure risk in PMPT, we use semivariance in relation to three target returns - 0, the risk-free rate and the European stock market return. To attest the results' robustness, we replicate the analysis estimating inputs from equilibrium models. We find that PMPT's portfolios select stocks that display return distributions with positive skewness and/or leptokurtosis. Additionally, these portfolios' composition favors stocks with low semivariance, characterized by low downside frequency and/or average downside deviation.<br>info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion

Includes abstract.<br>Includes bibliographical references (leaves 134-138).<br>The portfolio selection method developed by Markowitz gives a rational investor a way of evaluating different investment options in a portfolio using the expected return and variance of the returns. Sharpe uses the same optimization approach but estimates the mean and covariance in a regression framework using the index models. Sharpe makes a crucial assumption that the residuals from different assets are uncorrelated and that the beta estimates are constant. When the Sharpe model parameters are estimated using ordinary least squares, the regression assumptions are violated when there is significant autocorrelation and heteroskedasticity in the residuals. Furthermore, the presence of outlying observations in the data leads to unreliable estimates when the ordinary least squares method is used. We find significant correlation in the residuals from different shares and thus we use the Troskie-Hossain model which relaxes this assumption and ultimately produces an efficient frontier that is almost identical to the Markowitz model. The combination of the GARCH and AR models to remove both autocorrelation and heteroskedasticity is used on the single index model and it causes the efficient frontier to shift significantly to the left. Using dynamic estimation through the Kalman filter, it is noticed that the beta coefficients are not constant and that the resulting efficient frontiers significantly outperform the Sharpe model. In order to deal with the problem of outlying observations in the data, we propose using the Minimum Covariance Determinant, (MCD) estimator as a robust version of the Markowitz formulation. Robust alternatives to the ordinary lea.st squares estimator are also investigated and they all cause the efficient frontier to shift to the left. Finally, to solve the problem of collinearity in the multiple index framework, we construct orthogonal indices using principal components regression to estimate the efficient frontier.