It is now an accepted fact that the majority of financial markets worldwide are neither normal nor constant, and South Africa is no exception. One idea that can be used to understand such markets and has been gaining popularity recently is that of regimes and regime-switching models. In this...

The performance of dynamic trading and investment strategies can be difficult to predict. Although not without its problems, analysis of the historical performance of a strategy can provide valuable insight into its general risk and return properties. Furthermore, historical analysis allows one...

The sample covariance matrix is known to contain substantial statistical noise, making it inappropriate for use in financial decision making. Leading researchers have proposed various filtering methods that attempt to reduce the level of noise in the covariance matrix estimator. In most cases,...

Tail risk protection is a mantra in portfolio allocation. A common method in this context is the NMFRB allocation. Here, we extend it to drawdown risk measures and show that the proposed portfolios compete with machine learning-based portfolios such as Hierarchical Risk Parity (HRP) and...

We propose a portfolio allocation method based on risk factor budgeting using convex Nonnegative Matrix Factorization (NMF). Unlike classical factor analysis, PCA, or ICA, NMF ensures positive factor loadings to obtain interpretable long-only portfolios. As the NMF factors represent separate...