We investigate portfolio selection with alternative objective functions in a distributed computing environment. In particular, we optimise a portfolio's 'Omega' which is the ratio of two partial moments of the returns distributions. Since finding optimal portfolios under such performance...

We construct portfolios with an alternative selection criterion, the Omega function, which can be expressed as the ratio of two partial moments of the returns distribution. Finding Omega-optimal portfolios, in particular under realistic constraints like cardinality restrictions, requires to...

The Nelson-Siegel-Svensson model is widely-used for modelling the yield curve, yet many authors have reported ‘numerical difficulties' when calibrating the model. We argue that the problem is twofold: firstly, the optimisation problem is not convex and has multiple local optima. Hence standard...

We construct portfolios with an alternative selection criterion, the Omega function, which can be expressed as the ratio of two partial moments of a portfolio's return distribution. The main purpose of the paper is to investigate the empirical performance of the selected portfolios, especially...

An alleged weakness of heuristic optimisation methods is the stochastic character of their solutions: instead of finding the truly optimal solution, they only provide a stochastic approximation of this optimum. In this paper we look into a particular application, portfolio optimisation. We...

As a result of the recent financial crises, equity markets have performed poorly in the last five years or so. In consequence, equity long-only strategies have generally been unattractive over this period. This motivates the investigation on whether better performance can be achieved by...