Heuristic optimization methods and their application to finance are discussed. Two illustrations of these methods are presented: the selection of assets in a portfolio and the estimation of a complicated econometric model

We investigate the performance of the threshold accepting heuristic for the index tracking problem. The index tracking problem consists in minimizing the tracking error between a portfolio and a benchmark. The objective is to replicate the performance of a given index upon the condition that the...

Households who wish to extract home equity through refinancing their mortgage face a hidden transaction cost. The real value of the fixed nominal mortgage payment declines over time with inflation. The change in the real value of the mortgage payments from taking on a new mortgage is positive...

In this paper, we study the problem of option portfolio design under the Markowitz mean-variance framework. We extend the common practice of a pure-stock portfolio and include options in the design. The options returns are modeled statistically with first- and second-order moments, enriching the...

Portfolio selection problems have been thoroughly studied under the risk-and-return paradigm introduced by Markowitz. However, the usefulness of this approach has been hindered by some practical considerations that have resulted in poorly diversified portfolios or solutions that are extremely...

We determine the optimal investment strategy in a Black-Scholes financial market to minimize the so-called probability of drawdown, namely, the probability that the value of an investment portfolio reaches some fixed proportion of its maximum value to date. We assume that the portfolio is...

In this paper, a link between a time-consistent and a pre-commitment investment strategy is established. We define an implied investment target, which is implicitly contained in a time-consistent strategy at a given time step and wealth level. By imposing the implied investment target at the...