Metaheuristics

Practical Portfolio Optimization with Metaheuristics:Pre-assignment Constraint and Margin Trading ArXiv ID: 2503.15965 “View on arXiv” Authors: Unknown Abstract Portfolio optimization is a critical area in finance, aiming to maximize returns while minimizing risk. Metaheuristic algorithms were shown to solve complex optimization problems efficiently, with Genetic Algorithms and Particle Swarm Optimization being among the most popular methods. This paper introduces an innovative approach to portfolio optimization that incorporates pre-assignment to limit the search space for investor preferences and better results. Additionally, taking margin trading strategies in account and using a rare performance ratio to evaluate portfolio efficiency. Through an illustrative example, this paper demonstrates that the metaheuristic-based methodology yields superior risk-adjusted returns compared to traditional benchmarks. The results highlight the potential of metaheuristics with help of assets filtering in enhancing portfolio performance in terms of risk adjusted return. ...

Time-limited Metaheuristics for Cardinality-constrained Portfolio Optimisation ArXiv ID: 2307.04045 “View on arXiv” Authors: Unknown Abstract A financial portfolio contains assets that offer a return with a certain level of risk. To maximise returns or minimise risk, the portfolio must be optimised - the ideal combination of optimal quantities of assets must be found. The number of possible combinations is vast. Furthermore, to make the problem realistic, constraints can be imposed on the number of assets held in the portfolio and the maximum proportion of the portfolio that can be allocated to an asset. This problem is unsolvable using quadratic programming, which means that the optimal solution cannot be calculated. A group of algorithms, called metaheuristics, can find near-optimal solutions in a practical computing time. These algorithms have been successfully used in constrained portfolio optimisation. However, in past studies the computation time of metaheuristics is not limited, which means that the results differ in both quality and computation time, and cannot be easily compared. This study proposes a different way of testing metaheuristics, limiting their computation time to a certain duration, yielding results that differ only in quality. Given that in some use cases the priority is the quality of the solution and in others the speed, time limits of 1, 5 and 25 seconds were tested. Three metaheuristics - simulated annealing, tabu search, and genetic algorithm - were evaluated on five sets of historical market data with different numbers of assets. Although the metaheuristics could not find a competitive solution in 1 second, simulated annealing found a near-optimal solution in 5 seconds in all but one dataset. The lowest quality solutions were obtained by genetic algorithm. ...

A systematic literature review on solution approaches for the index tracking problem in the last decade ArXiv ID: 2306.01660 “View on arXiv” Authors: Unknown Abstract The passive management approach offers conservative investors a way to reduce risk concerning the market. This investment strategy aims at replicating a specific index, such as the NASDAQ Composite or the FTSE100 index. The problem is that buying all the index’s assets incurs high rebalancing costs, and this harms future returns. The index tracking problem concerns building a portfolio that follows a specific benchmark with fewer transaction costs. Since a subset of assets is required to solve the index problem this class of problems is NP-hard, and in the past years, researchers have been studying solution approaches to obtain tracking portfolios more practically. This work brings an analysis, spanning the last decade, of the advances in mathematical approaches for index tracking. The systematic literature review covered important issues, such as the most relevant research areas, solution methods, and model structures. Special attention was given to the exploration and analysis of metaheuristics applied to the index tracking problem. ...