Abstract
Portfolio optimization is one of the most important problems in the finance field. The traditional Markowitz mean-variance model is often unrealistic since it relies on the perfect market information. In this work, we propose a two-stage stochastic portfolio optimization model with a comprehensive set of real-world trading constraints to address this issue. Our model incorporates the market uncertainty in terms of future asset price scenarios based on asset return distributions stemming from the real market data. Compared with existing models, our model is more reliable since it encompasses real-world trading constraints and it adopts CVaR as the risk measure. Furthermore, our model is more practical because it could help investors to design their future investment strategies based on their future asset price expectations. In order to solve the proposed stochastic model, we develop a hybrid combinatorial approach, which integrates a hybrid algorithm and a linear programming (LP) solver for the problem with a large number of scenarios. The comparison of the computational results obtained with three different metaheuristic algorithms and with our hybrid approach shows the effectiveness of the latter. The superiority of our model is mainly embedded in solution quality. The results demonstrate that our model is capable of solving complex portfolio optimization problems with tremendous scenarios while maintaining high solution quality in a reasonable amount of time and it has outstanding practical investment implications, such as effective portfolio constructions.








Similar content being viewed by others

Explore related subjects
Discover the latest articles, news and stories from top researchers in related subjects.References
Ahmadi-Javid A, Fallah-Tafti M (2019) Portfolio optimization with entropic value-at-risk. Eur J Oper Res 279(1):225–241
Alexander GJ, Baptista AM (2004) A comparison of var and cvar constraints on portfolio selection with the mean-variance model. Manag Sci 50(9):1261–1273
Alexander S, Coleman TF, Li Y (2006) Minimizing cvar and var for a portfolio of derivatives. J Bank Finance 30(2):583–605
Andersson F, Uryasev S, Uryasev S (2001) Credit risk optimization with conditional value-at-risk criterion. Math Program 89(2):273–291
Artzner P, Delbaen F, Eber J-M, Heath D (1999) Coherent measures of risk. Math Finance 9(3):203–228
Badescu A, Elliott RJ, Ortega J-P (2015) Non-Gaussian GARCH option pricing models and their diffusion limits. Eur J Oper Res 247(3):820–830
Balanda KP, Macgillivray HL (1988) Kurtosis: a critical review. Am Stat 42(2):111–119
Baldacci R, Boschetti MA, Christofides N, Christofides S (2009) Exact methods for large-scale multi-period financial planning problems. CMS 6(3):281–306
Baluja S, Caruana R (1995) Removing the genetics from the standard genetic algorithm. Technical report, Pittsburgh, PA, USA
Baluja S (1994) Population-based incremental learning: a method for integrating genetic search based function optimization and competitive learning. Technical report, Pittsburgh, PA, USA
Ban G-Y, Karoui NE, Lim AEB (2016) Machine learning and portfolio optimization. Manag Sci 64(3):1136–1154
Barro D, Canestrelli E (2005) Dynamic portfolio optimization: time decomposition using the maximum principle with a scenario approach. Eur J Oper Res 163(1):217–229 (Financial Modelling and Risk Management)
Beasley JE (1990) OR-Library: distributing test problems by electronic mail. J Oper Res Soc 41(11):1069–1072
Beltratti A, Consiglio A, Zenios SA (1999) Scenario modeling for the management of international bond portfolios. Ann Oper Res 85(0):227–247
Best MJ, Grauer RR (1991) On the sensitivity of mean-variance-efficient portfolios to changes in asset means: some analytical and computational results. Rev Financ Stud 4(2):315
Birge JR, Louveaux F (1997) Introduction to stochastic programming. Springer series in operations research and financial engineering. United States Government Publishing Office, Washington, D.C
Black F, Litterman R (1992) Global portfolio optimization. Financ Anal J 48(5):28–43
Broadie M (1993) Computing efficient frontiers using estimated parameters. Ann Oper Res 45(1):21–58
Carhart MM (1997) On persistence in mutual fund performance. J Finance 52(1):57–82
Chang TJ, Meade N, Beasley JE, Sharaiha YM (2000) Heuristics for cardinality constrained portfolio optimisation. Comput Oper Res 27(13):1271–1302
Chen N, Kou S, Wang C (2017) A partitioning algorithm for Markov decision processes with applications to market microstructure. Manag Sci 64(2):784–803
Chen Y, Wang X (2015) A hybrid stock trading system using genetic network programming and mean conditional value-at-risk. Eur J Oper Res 240(3):861–871
Chopra VK, Ziemba WT (1993) The effect of errors in means, variances, and covariances on optimal portfolio choice. J Portf Manag 19(2):6–11
Conrad J, Kaul G (1998) An anatomy of trading strategies. Rev Financ Stud 11(3):489–519
Cooper MJ, Gutierrez RC, Hameed A (2004) Market states and momentum. J Finance 59(3):1345–1365
Crama Y, Schyns M (2003) Simulated annealing for complex portfolio selection problems. Eur J Oper Res 150(3):546–571
Cui T, Bai R, Parkes AJ, He F, Qu R, Li J (2015) A hybrid genetic algorithm for a two-stage stochastic portfolio optimization with uncertain asset prices. In Proceedings of the 2015 IEEE congress on evolutionary computation (CEC), pp 2519–2525, May 2015
Cui T, Cheng S, Bai R (July 2014) A combinatorial algorithm for the cardinality constrained portfolio optimization problem. In Proceedings of the 2014 IEEE congress on evolutionary computation (CEC), pp 491–498
Dantzig GB (1963) Linear programming and extensions. Rand corporation research study. Princeton University Press, Princeton
Dantzig GB (2004) Linear programming under uncertainty. Manag Sci 50(12 Supplement):1764–1769
Di Gaspero L, Di Tollo G, Roli A, Schaerf A (2011) Hybrid metaheuristics for constrained portfolio selection problem. Quant Finance 11(10):1473–1488
Embrechts P, Resnick SI, Samorodnitsky G (1999) Extreme value theory as a risk management tool. N Am Actuar J 3(2):30–41
Escudero LF, Garín A, Merino M, Pérez G (2007) A two-stage stochastic integer programming approach as a mixture of branch-and-fix coordination and benders decomposition schemes. Ann Oper Res 152(1):395–420
Fama EF (1965) The behavior of stock-market prices. J Bus 38(1):34–105
Fama EF, French KR (1993) Common risk factors in the returns on stocks and bonds. J Financ Econ 33(1):3–56
Fama EF, French KR (2012) Size, value, and momentum in international stock returns. J Financ Econ 105(3):457–472
Fleten S-E, Høyland K, Wallace SW (2002) The performance of stochastic dynamic and fixed mix portfolio models. Eur J Oper Res 140(1):37–49
Gaivoronski AA, Krylov S, van der Wijst N (2005) Optimal portfolio selection and dynamic benchmark tracking. Eur J Oper Res 163(1):115–131 (Financial Modelling and Risk Management)
Gao J, Li D (2013) Optimal cardinality constrained portfolio selection. Oper Res 61(3):745–761
Glasserman P, Xu X (2013) Robust portfolio control with stochastic factor dynamics. Oper Res 61(4):874–893
Glover F, Laguna M (1997) Tabu search. Kluwer Academic Publishers, Norwell
Golub B, Holmer M, McKendall R, Pohlman L, Zenios SA (1995) A stochastic programming model for money management. Eur J Oper Res 85(2):282–296
Greco S, Matarazzo B, Słowiński R (2013) Beyond Markowitz with multiple criteria decision aiding. J Bus Econ 83(1):29–60
Grundy BD, Martin JSM (2001) Understanding the nature of the risks and the source of the rewards to momentum investing. Rev Financ Stud 14(1):29–78
Gupta P, Inuiguchi M, Mehlawat MK, Mittal G (2013) Multiobjective credibilistic portfolio selection model with fuzzy chance-constraints. Inf Sci 229:1–17
Gupta P, Mehlawat MK, Saxena A (2010) A hybrid approach to asset allocation with simultaneous consideration of suitability and optimality. Inf Sci 180(11):2264–2285
He F, Rong Q (2014) A two-stage stochastic mixed-integer program modelling and hybrid solution approach to portfolio selection problems. Inf Sci 289:190–205
Higle JL, Wallace SW (2003) Sensitivity analysis and uncertainty in linear programming. Interfaces 33(4):53–60
Høyland K, Kaut M, Wallace SW (2003) A heuristic for moment-matching scenario generation. Comput Optim Appl 24(2–3):169–185
Høyland K, Wallace SW (2001) Generating scenario trees for multistage decision problems. Manag Sci 47(2):295–307
Huang C-F, Litzenberger RH (1988) Foundations for financial economics. North-Holland, New York
IBM ILOG CPLEX V12.1 User’s Manual for CPLEX, (2009)
Jegadeesh N, Titman S (1993) Returns to buying winners and selling losers: implications for stock market efficiency. J Finance 48(1):65–91
Jorion P (2006) Value at risk: the new benchmark for managing financial risk, 3rd edn. McGraw-Hill Education, New York
Junior LS, Franca IDP (2012) Correlation of financial markets in times of crisis. Physica A 391(1–2):187–208
Kall P, Wallace SW (1994) Stochastic programming. Wiley-interscience series in systems and optimization. Wiley, New York
Kaut M, Wallace SW (2007) Evaluation of scenario-generation methods for stochastic programming. Pac J Optim 3(2):257–271
Kaut M, Wallace SW (2011) Shape-based scenario generation using copulas. CMS 8(1–2):181–199
Kaut M, Wallace SW, Vladimirou H, Zenios S (2007) Stability analysis of portfolio management with conditional value-at-risk. Quant Finance 7(4):397–409
Kearns P, Pagan A (1997) Estimating the density tail index for financial time series. Rev Econ Stat 79(2):171–175
Kellerer H, Mansini R, Speranza MG (2000) Selecting portfolios with fixed costs and minimum transaction lots. Ann Oper Res 99(1):287–304
Wallace SW (2012) Modeling with stochastic programming. Springer series in operations research and financial engineering. Springer, New York
King MA, Wadhwani S (1990) Transmission of volatility between stock markets. Rev Financ Stud 3(1):5–33
Koedijk KG, Kool CJM (1992) Tail estimates of east european exchange rates. J Bus Econ Stat 10(1):83–96
Konno H, Wijayanayake A (2001) Portfolio optimization problem under concave transaction costs and minimal transaction unit constraints. Math Program 89(2):233–250
Krokhmal P, Palmquist J, Uryasev S (2002) Portfolio optimization with conditional value-at-risk objective and constraints. J Risk 4:11–27
Lanne M, Meitz M, Saikkonen P (2017) Identification and estimation of non-Gaussian structural vector autoregressions. J Econom 196(2):288–304
Leland H (2000) Optimal portfolio implementation with transactions costs and capital gains taxes. Haas School of Business Technical Report
Li J, Xu J (2013) Multi-objective portfolio selection model with fuzzy random returns and a compromise approach-based genetic algorithm. Inf Sci 220:507–521 (Online Fuzzy Machine Learning and Data Mining)
Litterman B et al (2003) Modern investment management: an equilibrium approach, vol 246. Wiley, New York
Liu B (2009) Some research problems in uncertainty theory. J Uncertain Syst 3(1):3–10
Liu H (2004) Optimal consumption and investment with transaction costs and multiple risky assets. J Finance 59(1):289–338
Lobo MS, Fazel M, Boyd S (2007) Portfolio optimization with linear and fixed transaction costs. Ann Oper Res 152(1):341–365
Longin FM (2000) From value at risk to stress testing: the extreme value approach. J Bank Finance 24(7):1097–1130
Lwin K, Qu R (2013) A hybrid algorithm for constrained portfolio selection problems. Appl Intell 39(2):251–266
Lwin KT, Qu R, MacCarthy BL (2017) Mean-var portfolio optimization: a nonparametric approach. Eur J Oper Res 260(2):751–766
Markowitz HM (1952) Portfolio selection. J Finance 7(1):77–91
Markowitz HM (1991) Portfolio selection: efficient diversification of investments, 2nd edn. Wiley, New York
Mausser H, Rosen D (1999) Beyond var: from measuring risk to managing risk. In: Proceedings of the IEEE/IAFE 1999 conference on computational intelligence for financial engineering (CIFEr 1999), pp 163–178
Metaxiotis K, Liagkouras K (2012) Multiobjective evolutionary algorithms for portfolio management: a comprehensive literature review. Expert Syst Appl 39(14):11685–11698
Moral-Escudero R, Ruiz-Torrubiano R, Suárez A (2006) Selection of optimal investment portfolios with cardinality constraints. In Proceedings of the 2006 congress on evolutionary computation (CEC2006), pp 2382–2388
Moskowitz TJ, Grinblatt M (1999) Do industries explain momentum? J Finance 54(4):1249–1290
Moskowitz TJ, Ooi YH, Pedersen LH (2012) Time series momentum. J Financ Econ 104(2):228–250 (Special Issue on Investor Sentiment)
Mulvey JM, Rosenbaum DP, Shetty B (1999) Parameter estimation in stochastic scenario generation systems. Eur J Oper Res 118(3):563–577
Mulvey JM, Vladimirou H (1992) Stochastic network programming for financial planning problems. Manag Sci 38(11):1642–1664
Mulvey JM, Ziemba WT (1995) Handbooks in operations research and management science, volume Volume 9, chapter Chapter 15 Asset and liability allocation in a global environment. Elsevier, pp 435–463
Pflug GC (2000) Some remarks on the value-at-risk and the conditional value-at-risk. Probabilistic constrained optimization, vol 49. Springer, Berlin, pp 272–281
Pritsker M (1997) Evaluating value at risk methodologies: accuracy versus computational time. J Financ Serv Res 12(2):201–242
Quaranta AG, Zaffaroni A (2008) Robust optimization of conditional value at risk and portfolio selection. J Bank Finance 32(10):2046–2056
Rockafellar RT, Uryasev S (2000) Optimization of conditional value-at-risk. J Risk 2:21–41
Rockafellar RT, Uryasev S (2002) Conditional value-at-risk for general loss distributions. J Bank finance 26(7):1443–1471
Rysz M, Vinel A, Krokhmal P, Eduardo P (2015) A scenario decomposition algorithm for stochastic programming problems with a class of downside risk measures. INFORMS J Comput 27(2):416–430
Shapiro JL (2002) The sensitivity of PBIL to its learning rate, and how detailed balance can remove it. In: Proceedings of the 7th workshop on foundations of genetic algorithms, Torremolinos, Spain, September 2-4, 2002, pp 115–132
Stoyan SJ, Kwon RH (2010) A two-stage stochastic mixed-integer programming approach to the index tracking problem. Optim Eng 11(2):247–275
Stoyan SJ, Kwon RH (2011) A stochastic-goal mixed-integer programming approach for integrated stock and bond portfolio optimization. Comput Ind Eng 61(4):1285–1295
Szego G (2002) Measures of risk. J Bank Finance 26(7):1253–1272
Topaloglou N, Vladimirou H, Zenios SA (2002) CVaR models with selective hedging for international asset allocation. J Bank Finance 26(7):1535–1561
Topaloglou N, Vladimirou H, Zenios SA (2008) A dynamic stochastic programming model for international portfolio management. Eur J Oper Res 185(3):1501–1524
Uryasev S (2000) Introduction to the theory of probabilistic functions and percentiles (value-at-risk). In: Uryasev SP (ed) Probabilistic constrained optimization. Nonconvex optimization and its applications, vol 49. Springer, Berlin, pp 1–25
Vassiadou-Zeniou C, Zenios SA (1996) Robust optimization models for managing callable bond portfolios. Eur J Oper Res 91(2):264–273
Wagner WH, Arnott RD (1990) The measurement and control of trading costs. Financ Anal J 46(6):73–80
Woodside-Oriakhi M, Lucas C, Beasley JE (2011) Heuristic algorithms for the cardinality constrained efficient frontier. Eur J Oper Res 213(3):538–550
Woodside-Oriakhi M, Lucas C, Beasley JE (2013) Portfolio rebalancing with an investment horizon and transaction costs. Omega 41(2):406–420 (Management science and environmental issues)
Xidonas P, Mavrotas G, Hassapis C, Zopounidis C (2017) Robust multiobjective portfolio optimization: a minimax regret approach. Eur J Oper Res 262(1):299–305
Yamai Y, Yoshiba T et al (2002) Comparative analyses of expected shortfall and value-at-risk: their estimation error, decomposition, and optimization. Monet Econ Stud 20(1):87–121
Yano H (2014) Fuzzy decision making for fuzzy random multiobjective linear programming problems with variance covariance matrices. Inf Sci 272:111–125
Yu L-Y, Ji X-D, Wang S-Y (2003) Stochastic programming models in financial optimization: a survey. Adv Model Optim 5(1)
Yu L, Wang S, Wu Y, Lai KK (2004) A dynamic stochastic programming model for bond portfolio management. In: Marian B, GeertDick van Albada PMAS, Jack D (eds) Computational science-ICCS 2004, volume 3039 of lecture notes in computer science. Springer, Berlin Heidelberg, pp 876–883
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Conflict of interest
The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.
Additional information
Communicated by Y. Ni.
Publisher's Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Cui, T., Bai, R., Ding, S. et al. A hybrid combinatorial approach to a two-stage stochastic portfolio optimization model with uncertain asset prices. Soft Comput 24, 2809–2831 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00500-019-04517-y
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00500-019-04517-y