Timing and diversification: A state-dependent asset allocation approach

Martin Hess

The European Journal of Finance, 2006, vol. 12, issue 3, 189-204

Abstract: The influence of changing economic environment leads the distribution of stock market returns to be time-varying. A conditionally optimal investment hence requires a dynamic adjustment of asset allocation. In this context, this paper examines the improvement in portfolio performance by simulating portfolio strategies that are conditioned on the Markov regime switching behaviour of stock market returns. Including a memory effect eliminates the empirical shortcoming of discrete state models, namely that they produce a standard and an extreme state in stock returns. So far, this has prevented the regimes from being used as a valuable conditioning variable. Based on a discrete state indicator variable, is presented evidence of considerable performance improvement relative to the static model due to optimal shifting between aggressive and well diversified portfolio structures.

Keywords: Asymmetric stock return distribution; conditional asset pricing; dynamic diversification; Markov regime switching; timing (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2006
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13518470500162741 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:eurjfi:v:12:y:2006:i:3:p:189-204

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/REJF20

DOI: 10.1080/13518470500162741

Access Statistics for this article

The European Journal of Finance is currently edited by Chris Adcock

More articles in The European Journal of Finance from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().