506 research outputs found
A Scalable Algorithm For Sparse Portfolio Selection
The sparse portfolio selection problem is one of the most famous and
frequently-studied problems in the optimization and financial economics
literatures. In a universe of risky assets, the goal is to construct a
portfolio with maximal expected return and minimum variance, subject to an
upper bound on the number of positions, linear inequalities and minimum
investment constraints. Existing certifiably optimal approaches to this problem
do not converge within a practical amount of time at real world problem sizes
with more than 400 securities. In this paper, we propose a more scalable
approach. By imposing a ridge regularization term, we reformulate the problem
as a convex binary optimization problem, which is solvable via an efficient
outer-approximation procedure. We propose various techniques for improving the
performance of the procedure, including a heuristic which supplies high-quality
warm-starts, a preprocessing technique for decreasing the gap at the root node,
and an analytic technique for strengthening our cuts. We also study the
problem's Boolean relaxation, establish that it is second-order-cone
representable, and supply a sufficient condition for its tightness. In
numerical experiments, we establish that the outer-approximation procedure
gives rise to dramatic speedups for sparse portfolio selection problems.Comment: Submitted to INFORMS Journal on Computin
Portfolio selection problems in practice: a comparison between linear and quadratic optimization models
Several portfolio selection models take into account practical limitations on
the number of assets to include and on their weights in the portfolio. We
present here a study of the Limited Asset Markowitz (LAM), of the Limited Asset
Mean Absolute Deviation (LAMAD) and of the Limited Asset Conditional
Value-at-Risk (LACVaR) models, where the assets are limited with the
introduction of quantity and cardinality constraints. We propose a completely
new approach for solving the LAM model, based on reformulation as a Standard
Quadratic Program and on some recent theoretical results. With this approach we
obtain optimal solutions both for some well-known financial data sets used by
several other authors, and for some unsolved large size portfolio problems. We
also test our method on five new data sets involving real-world capital market
indices from major stock markets. Our computational experience shows that,
rather unexpectedly, it is easier to solve the quadratic LAM model with our
algorithm, than to solve the linear LACVaR and LAMAD models with CPLEX, one of
the best commercial codes for mixed integer linear programming (MILP) problems.
Finally, on the new data sets we have also compared, using out-of-sample
analysis, the performance of the portfolios obtained by the Limited Asset
models with the performance provided by the unconstrained models and with that
of the official capital market indices
Design of Optimal Sparse Feedback Gains via the Alternating Direction Method of Multipliers
We design sparse and block sparse feedback gains that minimize the variance
amplification (i.e., the norm) of distributed systems. Our approach
consists of two steps. First, we identify sparsity patterns of feedback gains
by incorporating sparsity-promoting penalty functions into the optimal control
problem, where the added terms penalize the number of communication links in
the distributed controller. Second, we optimize feedback gains subject to
structural constraints determined by the identified sparsity patterns. In the
first step, the sparsity structure of feedback gains is identified using the
alternating direction method of multipliers, which is a powerful algorithm
well-suited to large optimization problems. This method alternates between
promoting the sparsity of the controller and optimizing the closed-loop
performance, which allows us to exploit the structure of the corresponding
objective functions. In particular, we take advantage of the separability of
the sparsity-promoting penalty functions to decompose the minimization problem
into sub-problems that can be solved analytically. Several examples are
provided to illustrate the effectiveness of the developed approach.Comment: To appear in IEEE Trans. Automat. Contro
A two-stage stochastic mixed-integer program modelling and hybrid solution approach to portfolio selection problems
In this paper, we investigate a multi-period portfolio selection problem with a comprehensive set of real-world trading constraints as well as market random uncertainty in terms of asset prices. We formulate the problem into a two-stage stochastic mixed-integer program (SMIP) with recourse. The set of constraints is modelled as mixed-integer program, while a set of decision variables to rebalance the portfolio in multiple periods is explicitly introduced as the recourse variables in the second stage of stochastic program. Although the combination of stochastic program and mixed-integer program leads to computational challenges in finding solutions to the problem, the proposed SMIP model provides an insightful and flexible description of the problem. The model also enables the investors to make decisions subject to real-world trading constraints and market uncertainty.
To deal with the computational difficulty of the proposed model, a simplification and hybrid solution method is applied in the paper. The simplification method aims to eliminate the difficult constraints in the model, resulting into easier sub-problems compared to the original one. The hybrid method is developed to integrate local search with Branch-and-Bound (B&B) to solve the problem heuristically. We present computational results of the hybrid approach to analyse the performance of the proposed method. The results illustrate that the hybrid method can generate good solutions in a reasonable amount of computational time. We also compare the obtained portfolio values against an index value to illustrate the performance and strengths of the proposed SMIP model. Implications of the model and future work are also discussed
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