A4.12 B4.16

Stochastic Financial Models
Part II, 2003

A single-period market contains dd risky assets, S1,S2,,SdS^{1}, S^{2}, \ldots, S^{d}, initially worth (S01,S02,,S0d)\left(S_{0}^{1}, S_{0}^{2}, \ldots, S_{0}^{d}\right), and at time 1 worth random amounts (S11,S12,,S1d)\left(S_{1}^{1}, S_{1}^{2}, \ldots, S_{1}^{d}\right) whose first two moments are given by

μ=ES1,V=cov(S1)E[(S1ES1)(S1ES1)T]\mu=E S_{1}, \quad V=\operatorname{cov}\left(S_{1}\right) \equiv E\left[\left(S_{1}-E S_{1}\right)\left(S_{1}-E S_{1}\right)^{T}\right]

An agent with given initial wealth w0w_{0} is considering how to invest in the available assets, and has asked for your advice. Develop the theory of the mean-variance efficient frontier far enough to exhibit explicitly the minimum-variance portfolio achieving a required mean return, assuming that VV is non-singular. How does your analysis change if a riskless asset S0S^{0} is added to the market? Under what (sufficient) conditions would an agent maximising expected utility actually choose a portfolio on the mean-variance efficient frontier?