General superposition strategies and asset allocation

Investors commonly use stopping rules to help them get in and out of their investment positions. Despite their widespread use and support from behavioral finance, there has been little discussion of their impact on portfolio performance in classic portfolio choice theory. In this thesis, I remedy this situation by discussing the performance impact of stopping rules, highlighting the stop-loss rule. Stop-loss rules-predetermined policies that reduce a portfolio's exposure after reaching a certain threshold of cumulative losses-are commonly used by retail and institutional investors to manage the risks of their investments, but have also been viewed with some skepticism by critics who question their efficacy. I develop a simple framework for measuring the impact of stop-loss rules on the expected return and volatility of an arbitrary portfolio strategy, and derive conditions under which stop-loss rules add or subtract value to that portfolio strategy. I show that under the Random Walk Hypothesis, simple 0/1 stop-loss rules always decrease a strategy's expected return, but in the presence of momentum, stop-loss rules can add value. To illustrate the practical relevance of this framework,

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Operations Research Center.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2007

Author dc:creator

• Kaminski, Kathryn Margaret

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Andrew W. Lo.

• Operations Research Center.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/40384

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/40384