In this paper, we analyze the asymptotic behavior of the main characteristics of the mean-variance efficient frontier employing random matrix theory. Our particular interest covers the case when the dimension p and the sample size n tend to infinity simultaneously and their ratio p/n tends to a positive constant (Formula presented.). We neither impose any distributional nor structural assumptions on the asset returns. For the developed theoretical framework, some regularity conditions, like the existence of the 4th moments, are needed. It is shown that two out of three quantities of interest are biased and overestimated by their sample counterparts under the high-dimensional asymptotic regime. This becomes evident based on the asymptotic deterministic equivalents of the sample plug-in estimators. Using them we construct consistent estimators of the three characteristics of the efficient frontier. Furthermore, the asymptotic normality of the considered estimators of the parameters of the efficient frontier is proved. Verifying the theoretical results based on an extensive simulation study we show that the proposed estimator for the efficient frontier is a valuable alternative to the sample estimator for high dimensional data. Finally, we present an empirical application, where we estimate the efficient frontier based on stocks from the S&P 500 index.

Consider a random vector y = Σ ^1/2 x, where the p elements of the vector x are i.i.d. real-valued random variables with zero mean and finite fourth moment, and Σ ^1/2 is a deterministic p × p matrix such that the eigenvalues of the population correlation matrix R of y are uniformly bounded away from zero and infinity. In this paper, we find that the log determinant of the sample correlation matrix R based on a sample of size n from the distribution of y satisfies a CLT (central limit theorem) for p/n → γ ∈ (0, 1] and p ≤ n. Explicit formulas for the asymptotic mean and variance are provided. In case the mean of y is unknown, we show that after re-centering by the empirical mean the obtained CLT holds with a shift in the asymptotic mean. This result is of independent interest in both large dimensional random matrix theory and high-dimensional statistical literature of large sample correlation matrices for non-normal data. Finally, the obtained findings are applied for testing of uncorrelatedness of p random variables. Surprisingly, in the null case R = I, the test statistic becomes distribution-free and the extensive simulations show that the obtained CLT also holds if the moments of order four do not exist at all, which conjectures a promising and robust test statistic for heavy-tailed high-dimensional data.

In this paper, we show the central limit theorem for the logarithmic determinant of the sample correlation matrix R constructed from the (p × n)-dimensional data matrix X containing independent and identically distributed random entries with mean zero, variance one and infinite fourth moments. Precisely, we show that for p/n → γ ∈ (0, 1) as n, p → ∞ the logarithmic law log det R − (p − n + ¹ ₂ )log(1 − p/n) + p − p/n _{→d N(0, 1)} ^√−2 log(1 − p/n) − 2p/n is still valid if the entries of the data matrix X follow a symmetric distribution with a regularly varying tail of index α ∈ (3, 4). The latter assumptions seem to be crucial, which is justified by the simulations: if the entries of X have the infinite absolute third moment and/or their distribution is not symmetric, the logarithmic law is not valid anymore. The derived results highlight that the logarithmic determinant of the sample correlation matrix is a very stable and flexible statistic for heavy-tailed big data and open a novel way of analysis of high-dimensional random matrices with self-normalized entries.

In this paper, new results in random matrix theory are derived, which allow us to construct a shrinkage estimator of the global minimum variance (GMV) portfolio when the shrinkage target is a random object. More specifically, the shrinkage target is determined as the holding portfolio estimated from previous data. The theoretical findings are applied to develop theory for dynamic estimation of the GMV portfolio, where the new estimator of its weights is shrunk to the holding portfolio at each time of reconstruction. Both cases with and without overlapping samples are considered in the paper. The non-overlapping samples corresponds to the case when different data of the asset returns are used to construct the traditional estimator of the GMV portfolio weights and to determine the target portfolio, while the overlapping case allows intersections between the samples. The theoretical results are derived under weak assumptions imposed on the data-generating process. No specific distribution is assumed for the asset returns except from the assumption of finite 4+ɛ, ɛ >0, moments. Also, the population covariance matrix with unbounded largest eigenvalue can be considered. The performance of new trading strategies is investigated via an extensive simulation. Finally, the theoretical findings are implemented in an empirical illustration based on the returns on stocks included in the S&P 500 index.

The main contribution of this paper is the derivation of the asymptotic behavior of the out-of-sample variance, the out-of-sample relative loss, and of their empirical counterparts in the high-dimensional setting, i.e., when both ratios p/n and p/m tend to some positive constants as m→∞ and n→∞, where p is the portfolio dimension, while n and m are the sample sizes from the in-sample and out-of-sample periods, respectively. The results are obtained for the traditional estimator of the global minimum variance (GMV) portfolio and for the two shrinkage estimators introduced by Frahm and Memmel (2010) and Bodnar et al. (2018). We show that the behavior of the empirical out-of-sample variance may be misleading in many practical situations, leading, for example, to a comparison of zeros. On the other hand, this will never happen with the empirical out-of-sample relative loss, which seems to provide a natural normalization of the out-of-sample variance in the high-dimensional setup. As a result, an important question arises if the out-of-sample variance can safely be used in practice for portfolios constructed from a large asset universe.

In this paper, using the shrinkage-based approach for portfolio weights and modern results from random matrix theory we construct an effective procedure for testing the efficiency of the expected utility (EU) portfolio and discuss the asymptotic behavior of the proposed test statistic under the high-dimensional asymptotic regime, namely when the number of assets p increases at the same rate as the sample size n such that their ratio p/n approaches a positive constant cin (0,1) as nto infty. We provide an extensive simulation study where the power function and receiver operating characteristic curves of the test are analyzed. In the empirical study, the methodology is applied to the returns of S&P 500 constituents.

Optimal portfolio selection problems are determined by the (unknown) parameters of the data generating process. If an investor wants to realize the position suggested by the optimal portfolios, he/she needs to estimate the unknown parameters and to account for the parameter uncertainty in the decision process. Most often, the parameters of interest are the population mean vector and the population covariance matrix of the asset return distribution. In this paper, we characterize the exact sampling distribution of the estimated optimal portfolio weights and their characteristics. This is done by deriving their sampling distribution by its stochastic representation. This approach possesses several advantages, e.g. (i) it determines the sampling distribution of the estimated optimal portfolio weights by expressions, which could be used to draw samples from this distribution efficiently; (ii) the application of the derived stochastic representation provides an easy way to obtain the asymptotic approximation of the sampling distribution. The later property is used to show that the high-dimensional asymptotic distribution of optimal portfolio weights is a multivariate normal and to determine its parameters. Moreover, a consistent estimator of optimal portfolio weights and their characteristics is derived under the high-dimensional settings. Via an extensive simulation study, we investigate the finite-sample performance of the derived asymptotic approximation and study its robustness to the violation of the model assumptions used in the derivation of the theoretical results.

We derive new results related to the portfolio choice problem for power and logarithmic utilities. Assuming that the portfolio returns follow an approximate log-normal distribution, the closed-form expressions of the optimal portfolio weights are obtained for both utility functions. Moreover, we prove that both optimal portfolios belong to the set of mean-variance feasible portfolios and establish necessary and sufficient conditions such that they are mean-variance efficient. Furthermore, we extend the derived theoretical finding to the general class of the log-skew-normal distributions. Finally, an application to the stock market is presented and the behaviour of the optimal portfolio is discussed for different values of the relative risk aversion coefficient. It turns out that the assumption of log-normality does not seem to be a strong restriction.