Paper 1, Section II, J
In a one-period market, there are assets whose prices at time are given by . The prices of the assets at time 1 have a distribution, with non-singular covariance , and the prices at time 0 are known constants. In addition, there is a bank account giving interest , so that one unit of cash invested at time 0 will be worth units of cash at time 1 .
An agent with initial wealth chooses a portfolio of the assets to hold, leaving him with in the bank account. His objective is to maximize his expected utility
Find his optimal portfolio in each of the following three situations:
(i) is unrestricted;
(ii) no investment in the bank account is allowed: ;
(iii) the initial holdings of cash must be non-negative.
For the third problem, show that the optimal initial holdings of cash will be zero if and only if