It is shown that the axioms for coherent risk measures imply that whenever there is an asset in a portfolio that dominates the others in a given sample (which happens with finite probability even for large samples), then this portfolio cannot be optimized under any coherent measure on that sample, and the risk measure diverges to minus infinity. This instability was first discovered on the special example of Expected Shortfall which is used here both as an illustration and as a prompt for generalization.
We provide analytical results for a static portfolio optimization problem with two coherent risk measures. The use of two risk measures is motivated by joint decision-making for portfolio selection where the risk perception of the portfolio manager is of primary concern, hence, it appears in the objective function, and the risk perception of an external authority needs to be taken into account as well, which appears in the form of a risk constraint. The problem covers the risk minimization problem with an expected return constraint and the expected return maximization problem with a risk const…
Investors who optimize their portfolios under any of the coherent risk measures are naturally led to regularized portfolio optimization when they take into account the impact their trades make on the market. We show here that the impact function determines which regularizer is used. We also show that any regularizer based on the norm $L_p$ with $p>1$ makes the sensitivity of coherent risk measures to estimation error disappear, while regularizers with $p<1$ do not. The $L_1$ norm represents a border case: its "soft" implementation does not remove the instability, but rather shifts its locus, w…
We study the sensitivity to estimation error of portfolios optimized under various risk measures, including variance, absolute deviation, expected shortfall and maximal loss. We introduce a measure of portfolio sensitivity and test the various risk measures by considering simulated portfolios of varying sizes N and for different lengths T of the time series. We find that the effect of noise is very strong in all the investigated cases, asymptotically it only depends on the ratio N/T, and diverges at a critical value of N/T, that depends on the risk measure in question. This divergence is the m…
Risk budgeting is a portfolio strategy where each asset contributes a prespecified amount to the aggregate risk of the portfolio. In this work, we propose an efficient numerical framework that uses only simulations of returns for estimating risk budgeting portfolios. Besides a general cutting planes algorithm for determining the weights of risk budgeting portfolios for arbitrary coherent distortion risk measures, we provide a specialised version for the Expected Shortfall, and a tailored Stochastic Gradient Descent (SGD) algorithm, also for the Expected Shortfall. We compare our algorithm to s…
We propose a new procedure for the risk measurement of large portfolios. It employs the following objects as the building blocks: - coherent risk measures introduced by Artzner, Delbaen, Eber, and Heath; - factor risk measures introduced in this paper, which assess the risks driven by particular factors like the price of oil, S&P500 index, or the credit spread; - risk contributions and factor risk contributions, which provide a coherent alternative to the sensitivity coefficients. We also propose two particular classes of coherent risk measures called Alpha V@R and Beta V@R, for which all the …
In this paper we propose the notion of continuous-time dynamic spectral risk-measure (DSR). Adopting a Poisson random measure setting, we define this class of dynamic coherent risk-measures in terms of certain backward stochastic differential equations. By establishing a functional limit theorem, we show that DSRs may be considered to be (strongly) time-consistent continuous-time extensions of iterated spectral risk-measures, which are obtained by iterating a given spectral risk-measure (such as Expected Shortfall) along a given time-grid. Specifically, we demonstrate that any DSR arises in th…
In this paper we present a theoretical framework for studying coherent acceptability indices in a dynamic setup. We study dynamic coherent acceptability indices and dynamic coherent risk measures, and we establish a duality between them. We derive a representation theorem for dynamic coherent risk measures in terms of so called dynamically consistent sequence of sets of probability measures. Based on these results, we give a specific construction of dynamic coherent acceptability indices. We also provide examples of dynamic coherent acceptability indices, both abstract and also some that gener…
We study a static portfolio optimization problem with two risk measures: a principle risk measure in the objective function and a secondary risk measure whose value is controlled in the constraints. This problem is of interest when it is necessary to consider the risk preferences of two parties, such as a portfolio manager and a regulator, at the same time. A special case of this problem where the risk measures are assumed to be coherent (positively homogeneous) is studied recently in a joint work of the author. The present paper extends the analysis to a more general setting by assuming that …
The entropic value-at-risk (EVaR) is a new coherent risk measure, which is an upper bound for both the value-at-risk (VaR) and conditional value-at-risk (CVaR). As important properties, the EVaR is strongly monotone over its domain and strictly monotone over a broad sub-domain including all continuous distributions, while well-known monotone risk measures, such as VaR and CVaR lack these properties. A key feature for a risk measure, besides its financial properties, is its applicability in large-scale sample-based portfolio optimization. If the negative return of an investment portfolio is a d…
We discuss the coherence properties of Expected Shortfall (ES) as a financial risk measure. This statistic arises in a natural way from the estimation of the "average of the 100p % worst losses" in a sample of returns to a portfolio. Here p is some fixed confidence level. We also compare several alternative representations of ES which turn out to be more appropriate for certain purposes.
We show that coherent risk measures are ineffective in curbing the behaviour of investors with limited liability or excessive tail-risk seeking behaviour if the market admits statistical arbitrage opportunities which we term $ρ$-arbitrage for a risk measure $ρ$. We show how to determine analytically whether such $ρ$-arbitrage portfolios exist in complete markets and in the Markowitz model. We also consider realistic numerical examples of incomplete markets and determine whether expected shortfall constraints are ineffective in these markets. We find that the answer depends heavily upon the pro…
Worst-case risk measures refer to the calculation of the largest value for risk measures when only partial information of the underlying distribution is available. For the popular risk measures such as Value-at-Risk (VaR) and Conditional Value-at-Risk (CVaR), it is now known that their worst-case counterparts can be evaluated in closed form when only the first two moments are known for the underlying distribution. These results are remarkable since they not only simplify the use of worst-case risk measures but also provide great insight into the connection between the worst-case risk measures …
Equivalent characterizations of multiportfolio time consistency are deduced for closed convex and coherent set-valued risk measures on $L^p(Ω,\mathcal F, P; R^d)$ with image space in the power set of $L^p(Ω,\mathcal F_t,P;R^d)$. In the convex case, multiportfolio time consistency is equivalent to a cocycle condition on the sum of minimal penalty functions. In the coherent case, multiportfolio time consistency is equivalent to a generalized version of stability of the dual variables. As examples, the set-valued entropic risk measure with constant risk aversion coefficient is shown to satisfy th…
Since risky positions in multivariate portfolios can be offset by various choices of capital requirements that depend on the exchange rules and related transaction costs, it is natural to assume that the risk measures of random vectors are set-valued. Furthermore, it is reasonable to include the exchange rules in the argument of the risk measure and so consider risk measures of set-valued portfolios. This situation includes the classical Kabanov's transaction costs model, where the set-valued portfolio is given by the sum of a random vector and an exchange cone, but also a number of further ca…
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…
We study the feasibility and noise sensitivity of portfolio optimization under some downside risk measures (Value-at-Risk, Expected Shortfall, and semivariance) when they are estimated by fitting a parametric distribution on a finite sample of asset returns. We find that the existence of the optimum is a probabilistic issue, depending on the particular random sample, in all three cases. At a critical combination of the parameters of these problems we find an algorithmic phase transition, separating the phase where the optimization is feasible from the one where it is not. This transition is si…
This paper deals with applications of coherent risk measures to pricing in incomplete markets. Namely, we study the No Good Deals pricing technique based on coherent risk. Two forms of this technique are presented: one defines a good deal as a trade with negative risk; the other one defines a good deal as a trade with unusually high RAROC. For each technique, the fundamental theorem of asset pricing and the form of the fair price interval are presented. The model considered includes static as well as dynamic models, models with an infinite number of assets, models with transaction costs, and m…
In this paper we develop a novel methodology for estimation of risk capital allocation. The methodology is rooted in the theory of risk measures. We work within a general, but tractable class of law-invariant coherent risk measures, with a particular focus on expected shortfall. We introduce the concept of fair capital allocations and provide explicit formulae for fair capital allocations in case when the constituents of the risky portfolio are jointly normally distributed. The main focus of the paper is on the problem of approximating fair portfolio allocations in the case of not fully known …
We study the properties of Expected Shortfall from the point of view of financial risk management. This measure --- which emerges as a natural remedy in some cases where Value at Risk (VaR) is not able to distinguish portfolios which bear different levels of risk --- is indeed shown to have much better properties than VaR. We show in fact that unlike VaR this variable is in general subadditive and therefore it is a Coherent Measure of Risk in the sense of reference (artzner)
A phase transition in high-dimensional random geometry is analyzed as it arises in a variety of problems. A prominent example is the feasibility of a minimax problem that represents the extremal case of a class of financial risk measures, among them the current regulatory market risk measure Expected Shortfall. Others include portfolio optimization with a ban on short selling, the storage capacity of the perceptron, the solvability of a set of linear equations with random coefficients, and competition for resources in an ecological system. These examples shed light on various aspects of the un…
Financial institutions have to allocate so-called "economic capital" in order to guarantee solvency to their clients and counter parties. Mathematically speaking, any methodology of allocating capital is a "risk measure", i.e. a function mapping random variables to the real numbers. Nowadays "value-at-risk", which is defined as a fixed level quantile of the random variable under consideration, is the most popular risk measure. Unfortunately, it fails to reward diversification, as it is not "subadditive". In the search for a suitable alternative to value-at-risk, "Expected Shortfall" (or "condi…
