In this paper we propose a new regression interpretation of the Cholesky factor of the covariance matrix, as opposed to the well-known regression interpretation of the Cholesky factor of the inverse covariance, which leads to a new class of regularized covariance estimators suitable for...

Using convex optimization, we construct a sparse estimator of the covariance matrix that is positive definite and performs well in high-dimensional settings. A lasso-type penalty is used to encourage sparsity and a logarithmic barrier function is used to enforce positive definiteness....