Frank Hassler at Engineering Returns blog wrote an excellent article Rotational Trading: how to reduce trades and improve returns. The article presents four methods to reduce trades: Trade less frequently. I.e. weekly instead of daily rebalancing. Different criteria for enter / exit a trade. Smooth the rank over the last ... [Read more...]

I wrote about Rebalancing in the Asset Allocation Process Summary post. Deciding how and when to rebalance (update the portfolio to the target mix) is one of the critical steps in the Asset Allocation Process. I want to study the portfolio performance and turnover for the following Rebalancing methods: Periodic ... [Read more...]

I want to show how to combine various risk measures I discussed while writing the series of posts about Asset Allocation with backtesting library in the Systematic Investor Toolbox. I will use Minimum Variance portfolio as an example for this post. I recommend reading a good discussion about Minimum Variance ... [Read more...]

The end of the month effect was examined by MarketSci in the The Last Day of the Month Blahs post. The idea is simple: buy on the last day of the month and sell a few days later. This idea was put into a strategy by Quanting Dutchman in the ... [Read more...]

I want to discuss the implementation of Rotational Trading Strategies using the backtesting library in the Systematic Investor Toolbox.The Rotational Trading strategy switches investment allocations throughout the time, betting on few top ranked assets. For example, the ranking can be based on relative strength or momentum. A few examples ... [Read more...]

I want to illustrate Backtesting with Short positions using an interesting strategy introduced by Woodshedder in the Simple, Long-Term Indicator Near to Giving Short Signal post. This strategy was also analyzed in details by MarketSci in Woodshedder’s Long-Term Indicator post. The strategy uses the 5 day rate of change (ROC5) ... [Read more...]

When designing a trading strategy, I want to make sure that small changes in the strategy parameters will not transform the profitable strategy into the loosing one. I will study the strategy robustness and profitability under different parameter scenarios using a sample strategy presented by David Varadi in the Improving ... [Read more...]

I wrote a simple Backtesting library to evaluate and analyze Trading Strategies. I will use this library to present the performance of trading strategies that I will study in the next series of posts. It is very easy to write a simple Backtesting routine in R, for example: The code ... [Read more...]

During the final stage of asset allocation process we have to decide how to implement our desired allocation. In many cases we will allocate capital to the mutual fund managers who will invest money according to their fund’s mandate. Usually there is no perfect relationship between asset classes and ... [Read more...]

The Black-Litterman Model was created by Fisher Black and Robert Litterman in 1992 to resolve shortcomings of traditional Markovitz mean-variance asset allocation model. It addresses following two items: Lack of diversification of portfolios on the mean-variance efficient frontier. Instability of portfolios on the mean-variance efficient frontier: small changes in the input ... [Read more...]

Small changes in the input assumptions often lead to very different efficient portfolios constructed with mean-variance optimization. I will discuss Resampling and Covariance Shrinkage Estimator – two common techniques to make portfolios in the mean-variance efficient frontier more diversified and immune to small changes in the input assumptions. Resampling was introduced ... [Read more...]

What is important for an investor? The rate of return is at the top of the list. Does the expected rate of return shown on the mean-variance efficient frontier paints the full picture? If investor’s investment horizon is longer than one period, for example 5 years, than the true measure ... [Read more...]

The Omega Ratio was introduced by Keating and Shadwick in 2002. It measures the ratio of average portfolio wins over average portfolio losses for a given target return L. Let x.i, i= 1,…,n be weights of instruments in the portfolio. We suppose that j= 1,…,T scenarios of returns with equal ... [Read more...]

In the Maximum Loss and Mean-Absolute Deviation risk measures, and Expected shortfall (CVaR) and Conditional Drawdown at Risk (CDaR) posts I started the discussion about alternative risk measures we can use to construct efficient frontier. Another alternative risk measure I want to discuss is Downside Risk. In the traditional mean-variance ... [Read more...]

The “Minimum Correlation Algorithm” is a term I stumbled at the CSS Analytics blog. This is an Interesting Risk Measure that in my interpretation means: minimizing Average Portfolio Correlation with each Asset Class for a given level of return. One might try to use Correlation instead of Covariance matrix in ... [Read more...]

In the last few posts I introduced Maximum Loss, Mean-Absolute Deviation, and Expected shortfall (CVaR) and Conditional Drawdown at Risk (CDaR) risk measures. These risk measures can be formulated as linear constraints and thus can be combined with each other to control multiple risk measures during construction of efficient frontier. ... [Read more...]

In the Maximum Loss and Mean-Absolute Deviation risk measures post I started the discussion about alternative risk measures we can use to construct efficient frontier. Another alternative risk measures I want to discuss are Expected shortfall (CVaR) and Conditional Drawdown at Risk (CDaR). I will use methods presented in Comparative ... [Read more...]

The Minimum Investment and Number of Assets Portfolio Cardinality Constraints are practical constraints that are not easily incorporated in the standard mean-variance optimization framework. To help us impose these real life constraints, I will introduce extra binary variables and will use mixed binary linear and quadratic programming solvers. Let’s ... [Read more...]

The 130/30 funds were getting lots of attention a few years ago. The 130/30 fund is a long/short portfolio that for each $100 dollars invested allocates $130 dollars to longs and $30 dollars to shorts. From portfolio construction perspective this simple idea is no so simple to implement. Let’s continue with our discussion ... [Read more...]

During construction of typical efficient frontier, risk is usually measured by the standard deviation of the portfolio’s return. Maximum Loss and Mean-Absolute Deviation are alternative measures of risk that I will use to construct efficient frontier. I will use methods presented in Comparative Analysis of Linear Portfolio Rebalancing Strategies: ... [Read more...]