Active Asset Allocation via Drawdown Control
May 23, 2012 - Strategic Allocation
Is drawdown control a practical investment policy? In their February 2012 paper entitled “Optimal Portfolio Strategy to Control Maximum Drawdown: The Case of Risk-based Active Management with Dynamic Asset Allocation” (the National Association of Active Investment Managers’ 2012 Wagner Award third place winner), George Yang and Liang Zhong examine maximum percentage drawdown target as a criterion for active portfolio asset class allocation. They name the strategy Rolling Economic Drawdown-Controlled Optimal Portfolio Strategy (REDD-COPS), with REDD defined as maximum percentage drawdown of an asset’s value during a one-year rolling historical window. They simplify asset allocation calculations by assuming that the maximum drawdown target represents investor risk aversion. They test the active strategy on three asset class indexes: the S&P 500 Total Return Index, Barclays Capital 20+ Year U.S. Treasury Bond Index and Dow-Jones UBS Commodity Total Return Index, with the 3-month U.S. Treasury bill (T-bill) as the risk-free asset. Using daily, weekly and monthly data for these asset class proxies from as far back as January 1951 (but January 1991 for most tests) through June 2011, they find that: Keep Reading