This paper investigates the uncertainty about the trading costs associated with a given portfolio strategy. I derive accurate approximations of the ex ante probability distributions of proportional trading costs and portfolio turnover under the conventional assumption of normal asset returns....

Investors often adopt mean-variance efficient portfolios for achieving superior risk-adjusted returns. However, such portfolios are sensitive to estimation errors, which affect portfolio performance. To understand the impact of estimation errors, I develop simple and intuitive formulas of the...

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...

I jointly treat two critical issues in the application of mean-variance portfolios, i.e., estimation risk and portfolio instability. I find that theory-based portfolio strategies known to outperform naive diversification (1/N) in the absence of transaction costs, heavily underperform it under...

This study presents a survey on the current methodologies employed in the asset allocation industry. We review techniques from Modern Portfolio Theory and focus on the central role of the mean-variance optimization problem. The formalism of the Black-Litterman model is discussed with its...

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 phrase long-term investing in triple leveraged ETFs is somewhat of an anathema for investment academicians. As a result of daily rebalancing and so-called beta slippage or “the constant leverage trap” it is highly likely over the long term to significantly deviate from the targeted...

Draw-down losses from a previously reached maximum portfolio wealth level, is an important risk measure for investment management. In this study, we present a discrete trading strategy to directly control a portfolio's maximum percentage of drawdown within a target level while maximizing the...

In this work, we propose an ARMA(1,1)-GARCH(1,1) model with standard classical tempered stable (CTS) innovations for historical daily returns of 29 selected stocks. The non-Gaussian nature of the innovations captures the fat-tail property observed in data. The dependency between different assets...

The paper empirically analyzes stock market integration and the benefit possibilities of international portfolio diversification across the Southeast Asia (ASEAN) and U.S. equity markets. It employs daily sample of 6 ASEAN equity market indices and S&P 500 index as a proxy of U.S. market index...