Momentum-boosted Practical Approach to MPT
July 9, 2014 - Momentum Investing, Strategic Allocation
Is there a practical way to apply momentum investing in a Modern Portfolio Theory (MPT) framework? In his June 2014 paper entitled “Momentum, Markowitz, and Smart Beta”, Wouter Keller constructs a long-only, unleveraged Modern Asset Allocation (MAA) model in three steps
- Make MPT tactical by using short historical intervals to predict future asset returns (rate of return, or absolute momentum), return volatilities (based on daily returns) and return correlations (based on daily returns), assuming that measured behaviors will materially persist the next month. Assign zero weight to assets with negative returns over the historical measurement interval.
- Simplify correlation calculations by relating daily historical returns for each asset to those for a single market return (the average return of all assets weighted equally) rather than to returns for all other assets separately.
- Dampen errors in rapidly changing asset return, volatility and correlation predictions by “shrinking” them toward their respective averages across all assets in the universe, and dampen the predicted market volatility by “shrinking” it toward zero.
He reforms the MAA portfolio monthly at the first close. His baseline historical interval for estimation of all variables is four months (84 trading days). His baseline shrinkage factor for all variables is 50%. His principal benchmark is the equally weighted (EW) “market” of all assets, rebalanced monthly. He assumes one-way trading friction of 0.1%. He considers a range of portfolio performance metrics: annualized return, annual volatility, maximum drawdown, turnover, Sharpe ratio, Omega ratio and Calmar ratio. Using daily dividend-adjusted prices for assets allocated to three universes (10 exchange-traded funds [ETF], 35 ETFs and 104 U.S. stocks/bonds) during December 1997 through December 2013, he finds that: Keep Reading