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Optimizing Expected Shortfall under an l(1) Constraint-An Analytic Approach

Papp, G; Kondor, I; Caccioli, F; (2021) Optimizing Expected Shortfall under an l(1) Constraint-An Analytic Approach. Entropy , 23 (5) , Article 523. 10.3390/e23050523. Green open access

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Abstract

Expected Shortfall (ES), the average loss above a high quantile, is the current financial regulatory market risk measure. Its estimation and optimization are highly unstable against sample fluctuations and become impossible above a critical ratio r=N/T , where N is the number of different assets in the portfolio, and T is the length of the available time series. The critical ratio depends on the confidence level α , which means we have a line of critical points on the α−r plane. The large fluctuations in the estimation of ES can be attenuated by the application of regularizers. In this paper, we calculate ES analytically under an ℓ1 regularizer by the method of replicas borrowed from the statistical physics of random systems. The ban on short selling, i.e., a constraint rendering all the portfolio weights non-negative, is a special case of an asymmetric ℓ1 regularizer. Results are presented for the out-of-sample and the in-sample estimator of the regularized ES, the estimation error, the distribution of the optimal portfolio weights, and the density of the assets eliminated from the portfolio by the regularizer. It is shown that the no-short constraint acts as a high volatility cutoff, in the sense that it sets the weights of the high volatility elements to zero with higher probability than those of the low volatility items. This cutoff renormalizes the aspect ratio r=N/T , thereby extending the range of the feasibility of optimization. We find that there is a nontrivial mapping between the regularized and unregularized problems, corresponding to a renormalization of the order parameters.

Type: Article
Title: Optimizing Expected Shortfall under an l(1) Constraint-An Analytic Approach
Open access status: An open access version is available from UCL Discovery
DOI: 10.3390/e23050523
Publisher version: https://doi.org/10.3390/e23050523
Language: English
Additional information: This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited
Keywords: portfolio optimization; regularization; renormalization
UCL classification: UCL
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Engineering Science
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Engineering Science > Dept of Computer Science
URI: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10128203
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