The case for property in the long run: a cointegration test

The benefits of property in the mixed asset portfolio has been the subject of a number of studies both in the UK and around the world. The traditional way of investigating this issue is to use MPT with the results suggesting that Property should play a significant role in the mixed asset portfolio. These results are not without criticism and generally revolve around quality and quantity of the property data series. To overcome these deficiencies this paper uses cointegration methodology which examines the longer term time series behaviour of various asset markets using a very long run desmoothed data series. Using a number of different cointegration tests, both pair-wise and multivariate, the results show, in unambiguous terms, that there is no contemporous cointegration between the major asset classes Property, Equities and Bonds. The implications of which are that Property does indeed have a risk reducing place to play in the long-run strategic mixed-asset portfolio. A result of particular relevance to institutions such as pension funds and life insurance companies who would wish to hold investments for the long-term

SU(8) family unification with boson-fermion balance

We formulate an $SU(8)$ family unification model motivated by requiring that the theory should incorporate the graviton, gravitinos, and the fermions and gauge fields of the standard model, with boson--fermion balance. Gauge field $SU(8)$ anomalies cancel between the gravitinos and spin $\frac {1}{2}$ fermions. The 56 of scalars breaks $SU(8)$ to $SU(3)_{family} \times SU(5)\times U(1)/Z_5$, with the fermion representation content needed for "flipped" $SU(5)$ with three families, and with residual scalars in the $10$ and $\overline{10}$ representations that break flipped $SU(5)$ to the standard model. Dynamical symmetry breaking can account for the generation of $5$ representation scalars needed to break the electroweak group. Yukawa couplings of the 56 scalars to the fermions are forbidden by chiral and gauge symmetries, so in the first stage of $SU(8)$ breaking fermions remain massless. In the limit of vanishing gauge coupling, there are $N=1$ and $N=8$ supersymmetries relating the scalars to the fermions, which restrict the form of scalar self-couplings and should improve the convergence of perturbation theory, if not making the theory finite and "calculable". In an Appendix we give an analysis of symmetry breaking by a Higgs component, such as the $(1,1)(-15)$ of the $SU(8)$ 56 under $SU(8) \supset SU(3) \times SU(5) \times U(1)$, which has nonzero $U(1)$ generator.Comment: Latex, 20 pages. To appear in a World Scientific volume celebrating the 50th anniversary of the quark model, H. Fritzsch and M. Gell-Mann, eds., and also in International Journal of Modern Physics A, Vol. 29 (2014) 1450130 (18 pages