Paper 4, Section II, J
Part II, 2009
An agent with utility , where is a constant, may select at time 0 a portfolio of assets, which he then holds to time 1 . The values of the assets at time 1 have a multivariate normal distribution with mean and nonsingular covariance matrix . Prove that the agent will prefer portfolio to portfolio if and only if , where
Determine his optimal portfolio.
The agent initially holds portfolio , which he may change to portfolio at cost , where is some positive transaction cost. By considering the function for , or otherwise, prove that the agent will have no reason to change his initial portfolio if and only if, for every ,