We first study mean-variance efficient portfolios when there are no trading constraints and show that optimal strategies perform poorly in bear markets. We then assume investors use a stochastic benchmark (linked to the market) as a reference portfolio. We derive mean-variance efficient...

In standard portfolio theories such as Mean-Variance optimization, Expected Utility Theory, Rank Dependent Utility Theory, Yaari's Dual Theory and Cumulative Prospect Theory, the worst outcomes for optimal strategies occur when the market declines (e.g, during crises), which is at odds with the...

In this paper we study the asset-liability management of an insurance company selling “participating contracts”. Participating contracts are typical insurance policies sold worldwide.The payoff of a participating policy is linked to the portfolio or the surplus of the insurance company. We...

We derive the optimal portfolio for an expected utility maximizer whose utility does not only depend on terminal wealth but also on some random benchmark (state-dependent utility). We then apply this result to obtain the optimal portfolio of a loss-averse investor with a random reference point...

We construct an algorithm that makes it possible to numerically obtain an investor's optimal portfolio under general preferences. In particular, the objective function and risks constraints may be driven by benchmarks (reflecting state-dependent preferences). We apply the algorithm to various...

We study optimal investment strategies under the objective of maximizing the Omega ratio, proposed by Keating and Shadwick (2002) as an alternative to the Sharpe ratio for performance assessment of investment strategies. We show that in a standard set-up of the financial market the problem is...

Recent literature has investigated the risk aggregation of a portfolio X=(Xi) under the sole assumption that the marginal distributions of the risks Xi are specified but not their dependence structure. There exists a range of possible values for any risk measure of S=X1 X2 ... Xn and the...

In this paper, we assess the magnitude of model uncertainty of credit risk portfolio models, i.e., what is the maximum and minimum Value-at-Risk (VaR) of a portfolio of risky loans that can be justi ed given a certain amount of available information. Puccetti and Ruschendorf (2012a) and...

The bounds for risk measures of a portfolio when its components have known marginal distributions but the dependence among the risks is unknown are often too wide to be useful in practice. Moreover, availability of additional dependence information, such as knowledge of some higher-order...

Pourbabaee, Kwak, and Pirvu (2016) determine the constant-mix strategy that minimizes Capital at Risk (CaR) under a negative correlation constraint with a benchmark. We extend their result to any increasing law invariant objective function without condition on the sign of the correlation. In...