• C++ Programming for Financial Engineering
    Highly recommended by thousands of MFE students. Covers essential C++ topics with applications to financial engineering. Learn more Join!
    Python for Finance with Intro to Data Science
    Gain practical understanding of Python to read, understand, and write professional Python code for your first day on the job. Learn more Join!
    An Intuition-Based Options Primer for FE
    Ideal for entry level positions interviews and graduate studies, specializing in options trading arbitrage and options valuation models. Learn more Join!

Black Litterman Optimal Portfolio vs Benchmark

Joined
6/26/13
Messages
4
Points
11
Good Morning,

i've been trying to use BL to optimize an asset allocation benchmark portfolio using as views some technical signals which give me overweight/underweight indications.

Benchmark does not have an allocation on cash which i would like to allow to my portfolio so i "extend the benchmark" with a "0" for cash weight.

I follow the algorithm, computing equilibrium mean returns and inserting the views (expressed as as range of -3 ... 3 standard deviation) and obtaining the new efficient frontier.

To choose the best portfolio i tried to find the one which maximes the Sharpe Ratio that is [Return - risk free]/Volatility.

The mainly inconvenient is that cash allocation results is often too large.

Can anyone give some tips or advice related to the problem? Or maybe some suggestions about different ways of doing a sort of optimized allocations vs benchmark given some buy/sell signals?

Thank you very much!!
 
You are right i have been too vague.
It was a silly way to say "too high to be done in reality"...
i thought immediately to insert some costraints but, before doing that, i wanted to ask here if you have me some smarter tips
 
Asimov could you kindly tell me how you found the market capitalization of every asset class to create the neutral starting point? thanks!
 
i did not use market capitalization to compute the neutral starting point but the benchmark's weights
 
Which kind of asset classes do you have in your benchmark? Do you use an equity benchmark? I'm wondering how to find all the market caps when you use a portfolio consisting of equity and bonds. For single stocks market cap is no issue. But I would like to build a portfolio based on ETFs. ETFs on stocks might also work (although a bit more complicated to find) as I found some market cap numbers for stock indices. But for bond ETFs I was not able to find a total market cap. Any ideas how to find such data? Or how to circumvent the issue with finding market caps for all ETFs/Indizes?
 
Which kind of asset classes do you have in your benchmark? Do you use an equity benchmark? I'm wondering how to find all the market caps when you use a portfolio consisting of equity and bonds. For single stocks market cap is no issue. But I would like to build a portfolio based on ETFs. ETFs on stocks might also work (although a bit more complicated to find) as I found some market cap numbers for stock indices. But for bond ETFs I was not able to find a total market cap. Any ideas how to find such data? Or how to circumvent the issue with finding market caps for all ETFs/Indizes?

I used classical asset classes like North America Equities, European Equities, Emerging Equities, Global Gov. Bonds, Emu Gov. Bonds, Global High Yield, Euro High Yield, Commodities...
As i said before i did not use market cap to compute equilibrium weights but benchmarks weights
 
Back
Top