RECENT RESEARCH

My recent and current research agenda focuses on the modeling and prediction of financial asset returns. In particular, my team and I develop and study multivariate stochastic processes suitable for complex data arising from a variety of financial instruments. By calibrating these constructs to real data with sophisticated statistical methodologies, we can make accurate predictions of risk and return.

This, in turn, leads to algorithms for improved asset allocation. We derive optimal investment strategies and portfolio weights, through time, for a given universe of risky assets, such as stocks, bonds, currencies, options, crypto-currencies, and commodities, accounting also for transaction costs and illiquidity issues.

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To get an idea of the improvements we obtain, Graphic 1 shows the performance of some of our models when applied to the stocks of the DJIA (top lines; total return over time) versus existing investment strategies (bottom lines) such as equally weighted (1/N), Markowitz, and traditional GARCH.

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The various methods I work on can be divided into five categories (see Graphic 2). The top four are based on multivariate constructs, and all support large-dimensional asset universes, despite the proliferation of parameters and the "curse of dimensionality". The fifth method is for multivariate portfolio allocation, but makes use of only simple, univariate models that have been augmented with extremely fast statistical and numerical approximation procedures to allow it to work.

 

Graphic 1: Performance of competing methods

Graphic 2: Five different categories of methods

The academic papers associated with these five methods are listed below in their respective categories.

The "COMFORT" methodology (acronym for COmmon Market Factor nOn-Gaussian ReTurn Model) is arguably the most interesting one from a purely theoretical / academic viewpoint, and is among the best performers. The third graphic shows a diagram indicating the core COMFORT model and the numerous extensions we are working on.

A famous quote (often attributed to Kong Tzu, better known as Confucius) is "A scholar who cherishes the love
of comfort is not fit to be deemed a scholar." There is much truth to this, as we need to relentlessly study and learn new things,
both for the sake of learning, and in order to generate worthwhile new research --- which is often very challenging and time-consuming. However, in our case, "COMFORT" is a core part of our academic efforts! We knew this is a promising and fortuitous approach---the fortune cookie we received, pictured on the right ("You will always be surrounded by comfort") is real.

A complete list of my published research work, along with citation information, can be found on my Google Scholar page.

Graphic 3: The COMFORT model family

Graphic 4: COMFORT fortune cookie

Distributional Testing