Asset pricing and portfolio selection based on the multivariate extended skew-Student-<Emphasis Type="Italic">t</Emphasis> distribution

The returns on most financial assets exhibit kurtosis and many also have probability distributions that possess skewness as well. In this paper a general multivariate model for the probability distribution of assets returns, which incorporates both kurtosis and skewness, is described. It is based on the multivariate extended skew-Student-t distribution. Salient features of the distribution are described and these are applied to the task of asset pricing. The paper shows that the market model is non-linear in general and that the sensitivity of asset returns to return on the market portfolio is not the same as the conventional beta, although this measure does arise in special cases. It is shown that the variance of asset returns is time varying and depends on the squared deviation of market portfolio return from its location parameter. The first order conditions for portfolio selection are described. Expected utility maximisers will select portfolios from an efficient surface, which is an analogue of the familiar mean-variance frontier, and which may be implemented using quadratic programming.     

Portfolios with fuzzy returns: Selection strategies based on semi-infinite programming

This paper provides new models for portfolio selection in which the returns on securities are considered fuzzy numbers rather than random variables. The investor's problem is to find the portfolio that minimizes the risk of achieving a return that is not less than the return of a riskless asset. The corresponding optimal portfolio is derived using semi-infinite programming in a soft framework. The return on each asset and their membership functions are described using historical data. The investment risk is approximated by mean intervals which evaluate the downside risk for a given fuzzy portfolio. This approach is illustrated with a numerical example.     

Optimal investment under partial information

We consider the problem of maximizing terminal utility in a model where asset prices are driven by Wiener processes, but where the various rates of returns are allowed to be arbitrary semimartingales. The only information available to the investor is the one generated by the asset prices and, in particular, the return processes cannot be observed directly. This leads to an optimal control problem under partial information and for the cases of power, log, and exponential utility we manage to provide a surprisingly explicit representation of the optimal terminal wealth as well as of the optimal portfolio strategy. This is done without any assumptions about the dynamical structure of the return processes. We also show how various explicit results in the existing literature are derived as special cases of the general theory.     

Bayesian inference of the fractional Ornstein–Uhlenbeck process under a flow sampling scheme

Using recent developments in econometrics and computational statistics we consider the estimation of the fractional Ornstein–Uhlenbeck process under a flow sampling scheme. To address the problem, we adopt throughout the paper an exact discretization approach. A flow sampling scheme arises, for example, naturally in modelling asset prices in continuous time since the time integral over successive observations defines the observable increments of asset log-prices. Exact discretization delivers an ARIMA(1,1,1) model for log-prices with a fractional driving noise. Building on the resulting exact discretization formulae and covariance function, a new Markov Chain Monte Carlo scheme is proposed and apply it to investigate the properties of both the time and frequency domain likelihoods/posteriors. For the exact discrete model, we adopt a general sampling interval of length h. This allows us to determine the optimal choice of h independent of the sample size. To illustrate the methods, with no ambition to a comprehensive data analysis, we use high frequency stock price data showing the relevance of aggregation over time issues in modelling asset prices.     

Theoretical and empirical estimates of mean–variance portfolio sensitivity

This paper studies properties of an estimator of mean–variance portfolio weights in a market model with multiple risky assets and a riskless asset. Theoretical formulas for the mean square error are derived in the case when asset excess returns are multivariate normally distributed and serially independent. The sensitivity of the portfolio estimator to errors arising from the estimation of the covariance matrix and the mean vector is quantified. It turns out that the relative contribution of the covariance matrix error depends mainly on the Sharpe ratio of the market portfolio and the sampling frequency of historical data. Theoretical studies are complemented by an investigation of the distribution of portfolio estimator for empirical datasets. An appropriately crafted bootstrapping method is employed to compute the empirical mean square error. Empirical and theoretical estimates are in good agreement, with the empirical values being, in general, higher.     

The mean-absolute deviation portfolio selection problem with interval-valued returns

In real-world investments, one may care more about the future earnings than the current earnings of the assets. This paper discusses the uncertain portfolio selection problem where the asset returns are represented by interval data. Since the parameters are interval valued, the gain of returns is interval valued as well. According to the concept of the mean-absolute deviation function, we construct a pair of two-level mathematical programming models to calculate the lower and upper bounds of the investment return of the portfolio selection problem. Using the duality theorem and applying the variable transformation technique, the pair of two-level mathematical programs is transformed into a conventional one-level mathematical program. Solving the pair of mathematical programs produces the interval of the portfolio return of the problem. The calculated results conform to an essential idea in finance and economics that the greater the amount of risk that an investor is willing to take on the greater the potential return.     

On extracting information implied in options

Options are financial instruments with a payoff depending on future states of the underlying asset. Therefore option markets contain information about expectations of the market participants about market conditions, e.g. current uncertainty on the market and corresponding risk. A standard measure of risk calculated from plain vanilla options is the implied volatility (IV). IV can be understood as an estimate of the volatility of returns in future period. Another concept based on the option markets is the state-price density (SPD) that is a density of the future states of the underlying asset. From raw data we can recover the IV function by nonparametric smoothing methods. Smoothed IV estimated by standard techniques may lead to a non-positive SPD which violates no arbitrage criteria. In this paper, we combine the IV smoothing with SPD estimation in order to correct these problems. We propose to use the local polynomial smoothing technique. The elegance of this approach is that it yields all quantities needed to calculate the corresponding SPD. Our approach operates only on the IVs—a major improvement comparing to the earlier multi-step approaches moving through the Black–Scholes formula from the prices to IVs and vice-versa.     

A tail-revisited Markowitz mean-variance approach and a portfolio network centrality

A measure for portfolio risk management is proposed by extending the Markowitz mean-variance approach to include the left-hand tail effects of asset returns. Two risk dimensions are captured: asset covariance risk along risk in left-hand tail similarity and volatility. The key ingredient is an informative set on the left-hand tail distributions of asset returns obtained by an adaptive clustering procedure. This set allows a left tail similarity and left tail volatility to be defined, thereby providing a definition for the left-tail-covariance-like matrix. The convex combination of the two covariance matrices generates a “two-dimensional” risk that, when applied to portfolio selection, provides a measure of its systemic vulnerability due to the asset centrality. This is done by simply associating a suitable node-weighted network with the portfolio. Higher values of this risk indicate an asset allocation suffering from too much exposure to volatile assets whose return dynamics behave too similarly in left-hand tail distributions and/or co-movements, as well as being too connected to each other. Minimizing these combined risks reduces losses and increases profits, with a low variability in the profit and loss distribution. The portfolio selection compares favorably with some competing approaches. An empirical analysis is made using exchange traded fund prices over the period January 2006–February 2018.

     

Approximating the time-weighted return: The case of flows at unknown time

We consider the problem of approximating the true time-weighted return when a cash flow occurs at an unknown time during the estimation period, which is usually the case of a traditional portfolio evaluated on a daily basis. We aim to provide the best approximation, in terms of mean square error (MSE), under the following main assumptions: the distribution of the log-returns belongs to a subclass of elliptical distributions; a single flow occurs at a uniformly distributed random time; the amount of the flow and the returns of the period are independent. We derive a closed-form formulation for high evaluation frequencies when the returns satisfy the popular assumption of a Geometric Brownian Motion. Besides, with the further assumption of small flows, the Original Dietz return can be obtained as an approximation of our optimal estimator. This implies that under the above-mentioned conditions the Original Dietz return has a MSE close to the minimum. Although further improvements of the MSE seem to be possible only by increasing the estimation frequency, which in turn is usually infeasible, our model provides a rigorous way to handle large flows, which are especially frequent in applications such as performance attribution.     

Weekday dependence of German stock market returns

The so‐called ‘Monday effect’ has been found for various stock markets of the world. The empirical finding that Monday returns are significantly smaller than returns measured for the remaining days of the week calls the efficiency hypothesis for pricing processes operating on stock markets into question. Investigating an index series measured at the Frankfurt stock exchange the paper compares estimation results of parametric and non‐parametric autoregressive models with respect to possible weekday dependence of return data. Allowing for heteroskedastic error distributions the wild bootstrap is used to infer against time‐varying means and correlation of return data in parametric models and to obtain confidence bands for non‐parametric estimates. It is shown that time dependence is an important feature describing the dynamics of German stock market returns in the period 1960–1979. Within two subsamples obtained from the period 1980–1997 the evidence in favour of such effects is mitigated substantially. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The participation puzzle with reference-dependent expected utility preferences

Expected utility theory with a smooth utility function predicts that, when allocating wealth between a risky and a riskless asset, investors allocate a positive amount to the risky asset whenever its expected return exceeds the riskless rate of return. A large number of people invest none of their wealth in risky assets, though, leading to the ”participation puzzle.” This paper explores whether the participation puzzle can be addressed when the utility function has a kink at the reference wealth level. It shows that when the reference wealth level is initial wealth increased by the riskless rate of return, there exists a range of expected excess returns for the risky asset for which the investor takes no position. Moreover, this range of expected excess returns is described by comparing a common performance measure of stock returns, the Omega Function, to a function of preference parameters. However, if the reference wealth level is any other constant, the usual expected utility prediction holds and investors allocate at least some of their wealth to the risky asset whenever it has a positive expected excess return.     

VARIATION IN THE MEAN SQUARED ERROR OF ESTIMATES DUE TO FUZZINESS IN THE INFORMATION SYSTEM

In the general problem of Parametric Point Estimation the Mean Squared Error often appears as a useful measure of goodness or closeness of estimates. Nevertheless, in very rare cases an estimator with smallest Mean Squared Error exists, but Statistical Inference provides a variety of methods to find estimates. that are usually characterized by a small Mean Squared Error.When the observation of outcomes from the probabilistic information system or experiment concerning the estimation problem involves fuzzy imprecision, so that the observable events are described by means of fuzzy events on the sample space, the use of Zadeh's probabilistic definition allows us to immediately extend the Mean Squared Error.In the present paper we are going to verify that the presence of fuzziness in experimental data entails a variation in that measure of goodnesss of estimation. On the basis of the last assertion the problem of selecting the suitable sample size, in order to remove the variation in the Mean Squared Error due to fuzziness or to estimate the parameter with a specified degree of precision, will be then discussed.     

中国股票市场横截面收益率的可预测性研究——兼与美国对比

本文旨在检验中国股票市场横截面收益的可预测性。我们选取了15个公司层面的特征指标作为变量,现有文献已经发现这些指标在美国股票市场上具有预测横截面股票收益的能力。我们检验这些变量在中国股票市场是否可以用来预测股票收益,样本的时间区间为1996~2015年。我们发现这些变量在中国股票市场对股票横截面收益的预测能力是相对较弱的。我们对中国股票市场的弱可预测性提出了两种可能的解释:其一,可能是收益预测因子在中国股票市场中的同质性比在美国股票市场中更强;其二,在中国股票市场中股票价格的无效率程度比较高。两种解释我们都找到了实证依据来支撑。     

Statistical Inferences of Risk Premium under the Generalized Exponential Premium Theory

The principle of exponential premium is an important premium principle in non-life actuarial science. This paper proposes an improved exponential premium principle. This premium principle can not only include the principle of exponential premium as a special case, but also the generalizations of Esscher premium principle and net premium principle, which has many excellent properties as a premium principle. We study the maximal likelihood estimates, nonparametric estimates and Bayesian estimation of risk premium, and discuss the statistical properties including asymptotic unbiased, coincidence, and asymptotic normality. In addition, the asymptotic confidence interval for this risk premium is given. Finally, the convergence rate of maximum likelihood estimation and nonparametric estimation is compared by numerical simulation method. The results show that the nonparametric estimation has a small mean square error when the sample size is small.     

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??The principle of exponential premium is an important premium principle in non-life actuarial science. This paper proposes an improved exponential premium principle. This premium principle can not only include the principle of exponential premium as a special case, but also the generalizations of Esscher premium principle and net premium principle, which has many excellent properties as a premium principle. We study the maximal likelihood estimates, nonparametric estimates and Bayesian estimation of risk premium, and discuss the statistical properties including asymptotic unbiased, coincidence, and asymptotic normality. In addition, the asymptotic confidence interval for this risk premium is given. Finally, the convergence rate of maximum likelihood estimation and nonparametric estimation is compared by numerical simulation method. The results show that the nonparametric estimation has a small mean square error when the sample size is small.     

On the Spurious Correlation Between Sample Betas and Mean Returns

Abstract

Cornerstone asset pricing models, such as capital asset pricing model (CAPM) and arbitrage pricing theory (APT), yield theoretical predictions about the relationship between expected returns and exposure to systematic risk, as measured by beta(s). Numerous studies have investigated the empirical validity of these models. We show that even if no relationship holds between true expected returns and betas in the population, the existence of low-probability extreme outcomes induces a spurious correlation between the sample means and the sample betas. Moreover, the magnitude of this purely spurious correlation is similar to the empirically documented correlation, and the regression slopes and intercepts are very similar as well. This result does not necessarily constitute evidence against the theoretical asset pricing models, but it does shed new light on previous empirical results, and it points to an issue that should be carefully considered in the empirical testing of these models. The analysis points to the dangers of relying on simple least squares regression for drawing conclusions about the validity of equilibrium pricing models.     

基于修正的已实现阈值幂变差的股市跳跃波动行为研究

基于非参数统计方法,利用考虑金融资产价格跳跃和杠杆效应的时点波动估计方法修正已实现阈值幂变差,构造甄别跳跃的检验统计量,对金融资产价格中的随机波动、有限活跃跳跃和无限活跃跳跃等问题进行综合研究。为同时吸收波动率的异方差集聚效应和收益率的非对称效应,对原有的已实现波动率异质自回归预测模型进行拓展,将非对称的异质性自回归模型的误差项设定为GARCH模型,以考察跳跃波动序列与连续波动序列之间的复杂关系。利用沪深股指高频数据进行实证研究,包括进行跳跃识别,跳跃活动程度检验和波动率预测效果对比。研究结果表明,沪深股市同时存在布朗运动成分、有限活跃跳跃和无限活跃跳跃成分,其中连续路径方差占主体。同时,收益和波动间的杠杆效应显著,无论短期还是长期,连续波动和跳跃波动对波动率的预测均具有显著影响,同时考虑股价的跳跃、波动和杠杆效应因素有助于更准确地刻画资产价格动态过程。     

Portfolio adjusting optimization with added assets and transaction costs based on credibility measures

In response to changeful financial markets and investor’s capital, we discuss a portfolio adjusting problem with additional risk assets and a riskless asset based on credibility theory. We propose two credibilistic mean–variance portfolio adjusting models with general fuzzy returns, which take lending, borrowing, transaction cost, additional risk assets and capital into consideration in portfolio adjusting process. We present crisp forms of the models when the returns of risk assets are some deterministic fuzzy variables such as trapezoidal, triangular and interval types. We also employ a quadratic programming solution algorithm for obtaining optimal adjusting strategy. The comparisons of numeral results from different models illustrate the efficiency of the proposed models and the algorithm.     

Equilibrium in an ambiguity-averse mean–variance investors market

In a financial market composed of n risky assets and a riskless asset, where short sales are allowed and mean–variance investors can be ambiguity averse, i.e., diffident about mean return estimates where confidence is represented using ellipsoidal uncertainty sets, we derive a closed form portfolio rule based on a worst case max–min criterion. Then, in a market where all investors are ambiguity-averse mean–variance investors with access to given mean return and variance–covariance estimates, we investigate conditions regarding the existence of an equilibrium price system and give an explicit formula for the equilibrium prices. In addition to the usual equilibrium properties that continue to hold in our case, we show that the diffidence of investors in a homogeneously diffident (with bounded diffidence) mean–variance investors’ market has a deflationary effect on equilibrium prices with respect to a pure mean–variance investors’ market in equilibrium. Deflationary pressure on prices may also occur if one of the investors (in an ambiguity-neutral market) with no initial short position decides to adopt an ambiguity-averse attitude. We also establish a CAPM-like property that reduces to the classical CAPM in case all investors are ambiguity-neutral.     

The Dynamic Interaction of Speculation and Diversification

A discrete time model of a financial market is developed, in which heterogeneous interacting groups of agents allocate their wealth between two risky assets and a riskless asset. In each period each group formulates its demand for the risky assets and the risk‐free asset according to myopic mean‐variance maximizazion. The market consists of two types of agents: fundamentalists, who hold an estimate of the fundamental values of the risky assets and whose demand for each asset is a function of the deviation of the current price from the fundamental, and chartists, a group basing their trading decisions on an analysis of past returns. The time evolution of the prices is modelled by assuming the existence of a market maker, who sets excess demand of each asset to zero at the end of each trading period by taking an offsetting long or short position, and who announces the next period prices as functions of the excess demand for each asset and with a view to long‐run market stability. The model is reduced to a seven‐dimensional nonlinear discrete‐time dynamical system, that describes the time evolution of prices and agents' beliefs about expected returns, variances and correlation. The unique steady state of the model is determined and the local asymptotic stability of the equilibrium is analysed, as a function of the key parameters that characterize agents' behaviour. In particular it is shown that when chartists update their expectations sufficiently fast, then the stability of the equilibrium is lost through a supercritical Neimark–Hopf bifurcation, and self‐sustained price fluctuations along an attracting limit cycle appear in one or both markets. Global analysis is also performed, by using numerical techniques, in order to understand the role played by the chartists' behaviour in the transition to a regime characterized by irregular oscillatory motion and coexistence of attractors. It is also shown how changes occurring in one market may affect the price dynamics of the alternative risky asset, as a consequence of the dynamic updating of agents' portfolios.