Index tracking with fixed and variable transaction costs

Index tracking is a form of passive portfolio (fund) management that attempts to mirror the performance of a specific index and generate returns that are equal to those of the index, but without purchasing all of the stocks that make up the index. We present two mixed-integer linear programming formulations of this problem. In particular we explicitly consider both fixed and variable transaction costs. Computational results are presented for data sets drawn from major world markets.     

Quantile regression for index tracking and enhanced indexation

Quantile regression differs from traditional least-squares regression in that one constructs regression lines for the quantiles of the dependent variable in terms of the independent variable. In this paper we apply quantile regression to two problems in financial portfolio construction, index tracking and enhanced indexation. Index tracking is the problem of reproducing the performance of a stock market index, but without purchasing all of the stocks that make up the index. Enhanced indexation deals with the problem of out-performing the index. We present a mixed-integer linear programming formulation of these problems based on quantile regression. Our formulation includes transaction costs, a constraint limiting the number of stocks that can be in the portfolio and a limit on the total transaction cost that can be incurred. Numeric results are presented for eight test problems drawn from major world markets, where the largest of these test problems involves over 2000 stocks.     

Variable-sized uncertainty and inverse problems in robust optimization

In robust optimization, the general aim is to find a solution that performs well over a set of possible parameter outcomes, the so-called uncertainty set. In this paper, we assume that the uncertainty size is not fixed, and instead aim at finding a set of robust solutions that covers all possible uncertainty set outcomes. We refer to these problems as robust optimization with variable-sized uncertainty. We discuss how to construct smallest possible sets of min–max robust solutions and give bounds on their size.A special case of this perspective is to analyze for which uncertainty sets a nominal solution ceases to be a robust solution, which amounts to an inverse robust optimization problem. We consider this problem with a min–max regret objective and present mixed-integer linear programming formulations that can be applied to construct suitable uncertainty sets.Results on both variable-sized uncertainty and inverse problems are further supported with experimental data.     

Ellipsoidal mixed-integer representability

Representability results for mixed-integer linear systems play a fundamental role in optimization since they give geometric characterizations of the feasible sets that can be formulated by mixed-integer linear programming. We consider a natural extension of mixed-integer linear systems obtained by adding just one ellipsoidal inequality. The set of points that can be described, possibly using additional variables, by these systems are called ellipsoidal mixed-integer representable. In this work, we give geometric conditions that characterize ellipsoidal mixed-integer representable sets.     

Kernel Search: An application to the index tracking problem

In this paper we study the problem of replicating the performances of a stock market index, i.e. the so-called index tracking problem, and the problem of out-performing a market index, i.e. the so-called enhanced index tracking problem. We introduce mixed-integer linear programming (MILP) formulations for these two problems. Furthermore, we present a heuristic framework called Kernel Search. We analyze and evaluate the behavior of several implementations of the Kernel Search framework to the solution of the index tracking problem. We show the effectiveness and efficiency of the framework comparing the performances of these heuristics with those of a general-purpose solver. The computational experiments are carried out using benchmark and newly created instances.     

A result in surrogate duality for certain integer programming problems

We consider linear programming problems with some equality constraints. For such problems, surrogate relaxation formulations relaxing equality constraints existwith zero primal-dual gap both when all variables are restricted to be integers and when no variable is required to be integer. However, for such surrogate formulations, when the variables are mixed-integer, the primal-dual gap may not be zero. We establish this latter result by a counterexample.     

Piecewise-Linear Approximations of Multidimensional Functions

We develop explicit, piecewise-linear formulations of functions f(x):ℝ ⁿ ↦ℝ, n≤3, that are defined on an orthogonal grid of vertex points. If mixed-integer linear optimization problems (MILPs) involving multidimensional piecewise-linear functions can be easily and efficiently solved to global optimality, then non-analytic functions can be used as an objective or constraint function for large optimization problems. Linear interpolation between fixed gridpoints can also be used to approximate generic, nonlinear functions, allowing us to approximately solve problems using mixed-integer linear optimization methods. Toward this end, we develop two different explicit formulations of piecewise-linear functions and discuss the consequences of integrating the formulations into an optimization problem.     

Optimal construction and rebalancing of index-tracking portfolios

Index funds aim to track the performance of a financial index, such as, e.g., the Standard?&?Poor’s?500 index. Index funds have become popular because they offer attractive risk-return profiles at low costs. The index-tracking problem considered in this paper consists of rebalancing the composition of the index fund’s tracking portfolio in response to new market information and cash deposits and withdrawals from investors such that the index fund’s tracking accuracy is maximized. In a frictionless market, maximum tracking accuracy is achieved by investing the index fund’s entire capital in a tracking portfolio that has the same normalized value development as the index. In the presence of transaction costs, which reduce the fund’s capital, one has to manage the trade-off between transaction costs and similarity in terms of normalized value developments. Existing mathematical programing formulations for the index-tracking problem do not optimize this trade-off explicitly, which may result in substantial transaction costs or tracking portfolios that differ considerably from the index in terms of normalized value development. In this paper, we present a mixed-integer linear programing formulation with a novel optimization criterion that directly considers the trade-off between transaction costs and similarity in terms of normalized value development. In an experiment based on a set of real-world problem instances, the proposed formulation achieves a considerably higher tracking accuracy than state-of-the-art formulations.     

Portfolio-optimization models for small investors

Since 2010, the client base of online-trading service providers has grown significantly. Such companies enable small investors to access the stock market at advantageous rates. Because small investors buy and sell stocks in moderate amounts, they should consider fixed transaction costs, integral transaction units, and dividends when selecting their portfolio. In this paper, we consider the small investor’s problem of investing capital in stocks in a way that maximizes the expected portfolio return and guarantees that the portfolio risk does not exceed a prescribed risk level. Portfolio-optimization models known from the literature are in general designed for institutional investors and do not consider the specific constraints of small investors. We therefore extend four well-known portfolio-optimization models to make them applicable for small investors. We consider one nonlinear model that uses variance as a risk measure and three linear models that use the mean absolute deviation from the portfolio return, the maximum loss, and the conditional value-at-risk as risk measures. We extend all models to consider piecewise-constant transaction costs, integral transaction units, and dividends. In an out-of-sample experiment based on Swiss stock-market data and the cost structure of the online-trading service provider Swissquote, we apply both the basic models and the extended models; the former represent the perspective of an institutional investor, and the latter the perspective of a small investor. The basic models compute portfolios that yield on average a slightly higher return than the portfolios computed with the extended models. However, all generated portfolios yield on average a higher return than the Swiss performance index. There are considerable differences between the four risk measures with respect to the mean realized portfolio return and the standard deviation of the realized portfolio return.     

Conic mixed-integer rounding cuts

A conic integer program is an integer programming problem with conic constraints. Many problems in finance, engineering, statistical learning, and probabilistic optimization are modeled using conic constraints. Here we study mixed-integer sets defined by second-order conic constraints. We introduce general-purpose cuts for conic mixed-integer programming based on polyhedral conic substructures of second-order conic sets. These cuts can be readily incorporated in branch-and-bound algorithms that solve either second-order conic programming or linear programming relaxations of conic integer programs at the nodes of the branch-and-bound tree. Central to our approach is a reformulation of the second-order conic constraints with polyhedral second-order conic constraints in a higher dimensional space. In this representation the cuts we develop are linear, even though they are nonlinear in the original space of variables. This feature leads to a computationally efficient implementation of nonlinear cuts for conic mixed-integer programming. The reformulation also allows the use of polyhedral methods for conic integer programming. We report computational results on solving unstructured second-order conic mixed-integer problems as well as mean–variance capital budgeting problems and least-squares estimation problems with binary inputs. Our computational experiments show that conic mixed-integer rounding cuts are very effective in reducing the integrality gap of continuous relaxations of conic mixed-integer programs and, hence, improving their solvability. This research has been supported, in part, by Grant # DMI0700203 from the National Science Foundation.     

Threshold Boolean form for joint probabilistic constraints with random technology matrix

We develop a new modeling and solution method for stochastic programming problems that include a joint probabilistic constraint in which the multirow random technology matrix is discretely distributed. We binarize the probability distribution of the random variables in such a way that we can extract a threshold partially defined Boolean function (pdBf) representing the probabilistic constraint. We then construct a tight threshold Boolean minorant for the pdBf. Any separating structure of the tight threshold Boolean minorant defines sufficient conditions for the satisfaction of the probabilistic constraint and takes the form of a system of linear constraints. We use the separating structure to derive three new deterministic formulations for the studied stochastic problem, and we derive a set of strengthening valid inequalities. A crucial feature of the new integer formulations is that the number of integer variables does not depend on the number of scenarios used to represent uncertainty. The computational study, based on instances of the stochastic capital rationing problem, shows that the mixed-integer linear programming formulations are orders of magnitude faster to solve than the mixed-integer nonlinear programming formulation. The method integrating the valid inequalities in a branch-and-bound algorithm has the best performance.     

Linear programming approaches for multicategory support vector machines

We consider linear programming approaches for support vector machines (SVM). The linear programming problems are introduced as an approximation of the quadratic programming problems commonly used in SVM. When we consider the kernel based nonlinear discriminators, the approximation can be viewed as kernel principle component analysis which generates an important subspace from the feature space characterized the kernel function. We show that any data points nonlinearly, and implicitly, projected into the feature space by kernel functions can be approximately expressed as points lying a low dimensional Euclidean space explicitly, which enables us to develop linear programming formulations for nonlinear discriminators. We also introduce linear programming formulations for multicategory classification problems. We show that the same maximal margin principle exploited in SVM can be involved into the linear programming formulations. Moreover, considering the low dimensional feature subspace extraction, we can generate nonlinear multicategory discriminators by solving linear programming problems.Numerical experiments on real world datasets are presented. We show that the fairly low dimensional feature subspace can achieve a reasonable accuracy, and that the linear programming formulations calculate discriminators efficiently. We also discuss a sampling strategy which might be crucial for huge datasets.     

Models and solution techniques for production planning problems with increasing byproducts

We consider a production planning problem where the production process creates a mixture of desirable products and undesirable byproducts. In this production process, at any point in time the fraction of the mixture that is an undesirable byproduct increases monotonically as a function of the cumulative mixture production up to that time. The mathematical formulation of this continuous-time problem is nonconvex. We present a discrete-time mixed-integer nonlinear programming (MINLP) formulation that exploits the increasing nature of the byproduct ratio function. We demonstrate that this new formulation is more accurate than a previously proposed MINLP formulation. We describe three different mixed-integer linear programming (MILP) approximation and relaxation models of this nonconvex MINLP, and we derive modifications that strengthen the linear programming relaxations of these models. We also introduce nonlinear programming formulations to choose piecewise-linear approximations and relaxations of multiple functions that share the same domain and use the same set of break points in the domain. We conclude with computational experiments that demonstrate that the proposed formulation is more accurate than the previous formulation, and that the strengthened MILP approximation and relaxation models can be used to obtain provably near-optimal solutions for large instances of this nonconvex MINLP. Experiments also illustrate the quality of the piecewise-linear approximations produced by our nonlinear programming formulations.     

Reformulation versus cutting-planes for robust optimization

Robust optimization (RO) is a tractable method to address uncertainty in optimization problems where uncertain parameters are modeled as belonging to uncertainty sets that are commonly polyhedral or ellipsoidal. The two most frequently described methods in the literature for solving RO problems are reformulation to a deterministic optimization problem or an iterative cutting-plane method. There has been limited comparison of the two methods in the literature, and there is no guidance for when one method should be selected over the other. In this paper we perform a comprehensive computational study on a variety of problem instances for both robust linear optimization (RLO) and robust mixed-integer optimization (RMIO) problems using both methods and both polyhedral and ellipsoidal uncertainty sets. We consider multiple variants of the methods and characterize the various implementation decisions that must be made. We measure performance with multiple metrics and use statistical techniques to quantify certainty in the results. We find for polyhedral uncertainty sets that neither method dominates the other, in contrast to previous results in the literature. For ellipsoidal uncertainty sets we find that the reformulation is better for RLO problems, but there is no dominant method for RMIO problems. Given that there is no clearly dominant method, we describe a hybrid method that solves, in parallel, an instance with both the reformulation method and the cutting-plane method. We find that this hybrid approach can reduce runtimes to 50–75 % of the runtime for any one method and suggest ways that this result can be achieved and further improved on.     

Depth-Optimized Convexity Cuts

This paper presents a general, self-contained treatment of convexity or intersection cuts. It describes two equivalent ways of generating a cut—via a convex set or a concave function—and a partial-order notion of cut strength. We then characterize the structure of the sets and functions that generate cuts that are strongest with respect to the partial order. Next, we specialize this analytical framework to the case of mixed-integer linear programming (MIP). For this case, we formulate two kinds of the deepest cut generation problem, via sets or via functions, and subsequently consider some special cases which are amenable to efficient computation. We conclude with computational tests of one of these procedures on a large set of MIPLIB problems.     

Mixed-integer linear programming for resource leveling problems

We consider project scheduling problems subject to general temporal constraints, where the utilization of a set of renewable resources has to be smoothed over a prescribed planning horizon. In particular, we consider the classical resource leveling problem, where the variation in resource utilization during project execution is to be minimized, and the so-called “overload problem”, where costs are incurred if a given resource-utilization threshold is exceeded. For both problems, we present new mixed-integer linear model formulations and domain-reducing preprocessing techniques. In order to strengthen the models, lower and upper bounds for resource requirements at particular points in time, as well as effective cutting planes, are outlined. We use CPLEX 12.1 to solve medium-scale instances, as well as instances of the well-known test set devised by Kolisch et al. (1999). Instances with up to 50 activities and tight project deadlines are solved to optimality for the first time.     

具有不确定交易价格的指数跟踪资产组合再平衡问题

本文考虑具有某种不确定性的交易费用及预算约束的指数跟踪资产组合的再平衡问题。在已有的模型中,预算约束中使用的交易价格通常是一个确定值。而在再平衡过程中,股票的实际交易价格是不确定的。本文使用有限状态的离散时间马尔柯夫链模型处理交易价格的不确定性,并基于情景分析方法建立了具有不确定预算关系式的再平衡模型,然后使用股票市场的实际样本数据进行了数值实验,模拟结果说明本文的模型是可行的。     

Direct methods with maximal lower bound for mixed-integer optimal control problems

Many practical optimal control problems include discrete decisions. These may be either time-independent parameters or time-dependent control functions as gears or valves that can only take discrete values at any given time. While great progress has been achieved in the solution of optimization problems involving integer variables, in particular mixed-integer linear programs, as well as in continuous optimal control problems, the combination of the two is yet an open field of research. We consider the question of lower bounds that can be obtained by a relaxation of the integer requirements. For general nonlinear mixed-integer programs such lower bounds typically suffer from a huge integer gap. We convexify (with respect to binary controls) and relax the original problem and prove that the optimal solution of this continuous control problem yields the best lower bound for the nonlinear integer problem. Building on this theoretical result we present a novel algorithm to solve mixed-integer optimal control problems, with a focus on discrete-valued control functions. Our algorithm is based on the direct multiple shooting method, an adaptive refinement of the underlying control discretization grid and tailored heuristic integer methods. Its applicability is shown by a challenging application, the energy optimal control of a subway train with discrete gears and velocity limits.      

Exact and approximation algorithms for a soft rectangle packing problem

We consider the problem of finding an arrangement of rectangles with given areas that minimizes the total length of all inner and outer border lines. We present a polynomial time approximation algorithm and derive an upper bound estimation on its approximation ratio. Furthermore, we give a formulation of the problem as mixed-integer nonlinear program and show that it can be approximatively reformulated as linear mixed-integer program. On a test set of problem instances, we compare our approximation algorithm with another one from the literature. Using a standard numerical mixed-integer linear solver, we show that adding the solutions from the approximation algorithm as advanced starter helps to reduce the overall solution time for proven global optimality, or gives better primal and dual bounds if a certain time-limit is reached before.