Sunday, July 23, 2017

Equity Portfolio Management Models and Assumptions



1-                   Client Constraints and Investments-

 

2-    Assumptions-

-         Financial data is stochastic –assuming randomness, i.e. price moves do not have memory (“random walk”/GBM with drift), fully reflect all available information.
-         Returns (“random steps”), or logs of returns are normally distributed (check for higher moments, normality tests).  
-         i.i.d –returns are presumed to be independent and identically distributed, which leads to normality of their aggregation (Central Limit Theorem).
-         Return distributions are stationary –past samples tell us a lot about future possible values; note that prices are not stationary. Stationarity assumes that mean and variance are stable through time.
This specifically means that we can take the average return from history, and the volatility associated with past sample and extend it into the future.
Time Varying Volatility by GARCH (Volatility is mean reverting), EWMA etc. models.

Market Inefficiencies-

-         Small Cap outperformance
-         Low P/E outperformance
-         Returns via technical analysis.

3-                   Risk Budget-

Refers to how much pain the Client is willing to accept either at the end of or during the investment period to stay invested.

4-                   Measuring Return-

a.    Time-Weighted Rate of Return compound rate of growth in a portfolio. Because this method eliminates the distorting effects created by inflows of new money.

b.    IRR –Internal Rate of Return rate at which the net present value of all the cash flows (both positive and negative) from a project or investment equal zero.

c.     Geometric- Already includes risk.
 

d.    Log-Returns- 
-         Log-returns approximate raw returns
-         Log-normality is a nice assumption for prices, making log-returns normal
-         Log-returns additive in time leading to normality of compounded returns
-         Log-returns help with calculus
Note: log-returns do not aggregate across securities.

5-    Risk-Reward Ratios-

4.1        Sharpe Ratio-

Measures risk reward portfolio efficiency.
Excess return over per unit of standard deviation.

4.2        Sortino Ratio-

Focuses on downside volatility. MAR is Minimum Acceptable Return. 

4.3        Information Ratio-

Ratio of portfolio returns above the returns of a benchmark -- usually an index -- to the volatility of those returns.


6-                   Maximum Loss given probability-

6.1           VaR –

Measures the potential loss in value over a defined period for a given confidence interval.

6.2           cVaR / ETL –

Estimated Tail Loss, is frequently defined as the mean (expected value) of the distribution of potential losses beyond VaR.

6.3           Stress loss



7-                   Equity Modeling-

7.1.1            Utility function (Risky And risk-free asset)-

Utility Function-
Utility function U(W) is a relationship between a level of wealth (W) and your perceived satisfaction from it
ÊŽ = risk-aversion factor of investor.
Risk-free asset has zero volatility and zero correlation to the risk asset, we have the following situation:
Maximizing Utility Score

7.1.2            CAPM-

Expected return of a security is driven entirely by risk-free rate, return of the market portfolio, and security’s sensitivity to the return of the market.

7.1.3            Modern Portfolio Theory-

In the presence of risk free asset rational investors will figure out that the best strategy is to combine one optimal risky portfolio (which becomes the “market portfolio”) with a long or short risk-free position.
Assumptions-
Asset Assumptions
Market Assumptions
Investor Assumptions
-         Asset can be described by returns, deviations and pairwise correlations.
-         Returns are normally distributed and are stationary.
-         Risk free borrowing and lending
-         No taxes and transaction costs.
-         Markets are efficient in information and trading

-         Investors are rational and risk averse.
-         Investor balance their portfolio frequently.

7.1.4            Factor Models-

-         Helps in identifying systematic risk.
-         Thousands of securities can be expressed in meaningful factors.
-         Factors are generally considered close to Normal Distribution.
-         Linear aggregation of factor betas provides a tool for bottom-up and top-down analysis of portfolios.

Optimizing Factor model via Regression-

E.g.- We have 5 assets and number of macro-economic factors and indexes-
a.    Find the macroeconomic factors that are highly correlated with asset returns.
Note- Factors of one asset returns should not have high correlation with factors of other asset returns.
b.    Regress the shortlisted factors (two in example) with the corresponding asset returns.
c.     Find the covariance matrix of all shortlisted factors (C).
d.    Finding the covariance Matrix of coefficients (B)-
Create a matrix of 5* 10.
-         First row- Column 1 and Column 2 = Slope Regression coefficients of asset 1 (Intercept is ignored) and all remaining columns with 0 value.
-         Second Row-  Column 3 and Column 4 = Slope Regression coefficients of asset 2 (Intercept is ignored) and all remaining columns with 0 value.
-         Same process for all remaining rows and columns.
e.    Perform the matrix multiplication D = (B’CB).
f.      Covariance Matrix of Factor Model (Cov)= Add square of regression SE of each asset (b) to the diagonal of D.
g.     RP = Weight * Expected Returns.
h.    Standard Deviation = Sqrt( Cov * Weight)
i.       Minimize Standard deviation.

7.1.4.1                  Fama And French Three Factor Model-


Expansion of CAPM with addition of two factors i.e.  size and Value.
r = portfolio's expected rate of return, Rf = risk-free return rate,
Km = return of the market portfolio.
SMB (size) = "Small [market capitalization] - Big" and
HML = “High [book-to-market ratio (Value Stock)] -  Minus Low

7.1.5            Arbitrage Pricing Theory / Factor Model-

-         Asset pricing can be modeled as a function of macro factors and indexes
-         If you can generate superior predictions of economic development, superior asset pricing assessment might follow, leading to opportunity of higher returns per unit of risk
-         Powerful approach in combination with other allocation approaches

Disadvantage- It works good only for well diversified portfolio.

7.1.6            Black-Litterman-

-         Start with the Market Portfolio –markets are efficient and in equilibrium
-         Identify your views and conviction levels
-         Mix return and risk projections from the Market with your views, then optimize in MPT fashion
-         There still is an optimal portfolio for a level of risk, but it will be different based on your views

7.1.7            Risk Parity-[1]

Weight of asset is inversely proportional to standard deviation of asset.
-         Adjusted for risk, various assets produce similar excess returns
-         Allocating risk “equally” to various risk assets will generate more stable outcomes
-         Solution for optimal allocation is independent of the risk budget –utilization of budget is achieved through leverage
Disadvantages- This model is very sensitive to N and ex-poste and ex-ante returns.
Highly correlated assets will occupy larger portions of risk.
Covariance structure is not fully utilized.

7.1.8            “New” Risk Parity –MDP (Maximum Diversification Portfolio)-

Diversification Ratio:

8-                   Optimal Allocation: Approaches

8.1                  Mean Variance Optimization(MVO)-

Intuition- To maximize sharpe ratio.
Minimize volatility for a given level of returns-
Return = Weight * retun
Volatility = sqrt (Variance of Portfolio)
Conditions-
a.    Sum of weights should be 1 (No short position or leveraging).
b.    Setting return as per the constraint.
c.     Weights of assets > Lower bound
d.    Weights of Assets < Upper Bound.
Minimize Volatility

Disadvantages of MVO)-

-         Highly sensitive to the unstable part of model i.e. risk and return
-         If assets are highly correlated, slight changes leads to higher turnover.
-         Maximizing Sharpe Ratio may lead to large long or short positions.
-         Returns, variance and correlations are considered stationary.

9-                   Technical Analysis-

-         Relative Strength Index
-         Moving Average Convergence/Divergence (MACD)
-         Bollinger Bands (BOLL)
-         Stochastics (STO)
-         Directional Movement Index (DMI)
-         Ichimoku (GOC)
-         Volume at Time (VAT)


[1] if you don’t have views – consider Risk Parity type approach.

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