[R-SIG-Finance] random portfolios

Kevin Dhingra kevin.dhingra at appliedacademics.com
Tue Mar 21 01:06:35 CET 2017


Brian,

Yes I think that will be a good starting point. My universe would not
change a lot (I will be working with 10-15 benchmarks at a time and I guess
I can generate a reusable set for each independently before running it
through my main algorithm). Having said that, I envision the investment
mandates/constraints changing quite a lot (both in the cross section and
also over time for the same manager). I am hoping there must be a way
around it using rejection sampling but have not done enough research to
comment on how that solution works for such big dimensions. It will be
really helpful if you could point me to any specific resources from
academia for the same (Haven't been able to find much about random
portfolios myself except Portfolio Analytics and Patrick Burns work on
Portfolio Probe). As a side note - Do you think translating it using Rcpp
would be time well spent or you think there must be a smarter way to get
around it still using R?

I really appreciate your help on this thread.

Regards,
Kshitij Dhingra

On Mon, Mar 20, 2017 at 7:21 PM, Brian G. Peterson <brian at braverock.com>
wrote:

> For this type of problem, I would probably generate one set of random
> portfolios and just reuse that set of feasible portfolios...  My usual rule
> is n-assets + 1-2k feasible portfolios.  You can get a better number e.g.
> from sampling theory, but this should be enough.
>
> Once you have this weights matrix rp, you only need to regenerate rp if
> your universe changes.
>
> Still interested in a more efficient implementation, of course, or we can
> work with you to see if we can find resources to work on it, e.g. from
> academia.
>
> Regards,
>
> Brian
>
>
> On 03/20/2017 05:28 PM, Kevin Dhingra wrote:
>
>> Hi Ross,
>>
>> Sure. Even though I have not profiled the bottlenecks quite in detail as
>> of
>> yet, i will give you a decent idea of the problem I am working with. I can
>> have multiple indices with as much as 2000 assets with group, position and
>> turnover limits (Not sure if i can increase the speed by removing
>> constraints and doing rejection sampling later). In order to generate a
>> daily possible set for the market in this case, I was playing around with
>> ~4-5 thousand permutations. Also I think I will end up using the "sample"
>> method because of the type of constraints we have and as you already have
>> mentioned that method is the slowest (takes about 30 times the time using
>> "simplex" for the same constraints). Adding box and position limit
>> constraints are causing it to run a bit slower (but its not a big
>> difference). I can always provide a more thorough analysis of the
>> potential
>> bottlenecks with a lot more detail when I have a chance to start working
>> on
>> translating it to cpp
>>
>> Thank you,
>>
>> On Mon, Mar 20, 2017 at 4:04 PM, Ross Bennett <rossbennett34 at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>> Kevin,
>>>
>>> Can you give us a sense of the number of assets in the portfolio and
>>> the constraints? That will help us understand where the potential
>>> bottlenecks are in the random portfolio generation. For example,
>>> generating a set of random portfolios for box and weight constraints
>>> if relatively fast, but adding group or position limit constraints
>>> makes the algorithm more complicated and slower.
>>>
>>> Thanks,
>>> Ross
>>>
>>>
>>> On Mon, Mar 20, 2017 at 2:35 PM, Kevin Dhingra
>>> <kevin.dhingra at appliedacademics.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Brian,
>>>>
>>>> Thank you for a quick reply. I will soon be working on that problem and
>>>> from what I have played with so far, it is unlikely that for our example
>>>> ~2k portfolios will be enough (really hoping it would) to get a good
>>>>
>>> sense
>>>
>>>> of the feasible space and seems like I need to implement an Rcpp version
>>>>
>>> of
>>>
>>>> the random portfolios function. I will be happy to collaborate and share
>>>>
>>> my
>>>
>>>> code once i get a decent handle on it locally for the purposes of our
>>>> current project.
>>>>
>>>> Regards,
>>>> Kshitij Dhingra
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Mon, Mar 20, 2017 at 3:17 PM, Brian G. Peterson <brian at braverock.com
>>>> >
>>>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> On Mon, 2017-03-20 at 15:09 -0400, Kevin Dhingra wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> I have been using the random_portfolios function from the
>>>>>> `PortfolioAnalytics` package to simulate the range of possibilities
>>>>>> for return paths at each step under various portfolio constraints /
>>>>>> mandates for evaluating mutual fund managers. As more managers are
>>>>>> added to the universe, however, and more simulations are needed, the
>>>>>> pure R implementations get pretty heavy and hard to scale. I was
>>>>>> wondering if there has been any work out there thus far on
>>>>>> implementing any of the three random portfolio generation methods
>>>>>> (sample, simplex, and grid search) at a lower level, using something
>>>>>> like `Rcpp` to enhance the efficiency of these algorithms?
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> We've discussed it, but I can't say that it is terribly high on our
>>>>> list of priorities.
>>>>>
>>>>> In most cases, no more than 1-2k portfolios should be required to get a
>>>>> fair view of the feasible space given your constraints and objectives.
>>>>>
>>>>> We'd be happy to work with you if you want to craft a patch to use C or
>>>>> Rcpp for this.
>>>>>
>>>>> Regards,
>>>>>
>>>>> Brian
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>> Kshitij Dhingra
>>>> Applied Academics LLC
>>>> Office: +1.917.262.0516
>>>> Mobile: +1.206.696.5945
>>>> Email: kshitij.dhingra at appliedacademics.com
>>>> Website: http://www.AppliedAcademics.com
>>>>
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>>>>
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>>> should go.
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>
> --
> Brian G. Peterson
> http://braverock.com/brian/
> Ph: 773-459-4973
> IM: bgpbraverock
>
>
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-- 
Kshitij Dhingra
Applied Academics LLC
Office: +1.917.262.0516
Mobile: +1.206.696.5945
Email: kshitij.dhingra at appliedacademics.com
Website: http://www.AppliedAcademics.com

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