Why estimation risk matters for mean-variance portfolios
Mean-variance analysis (Markowitz, 1952) tells an investor which portfolio to hold once the mean vector μ and covariance matrix Σ of asset returns are known. In practice both are estimated from a finite window of past returns, and the portfolio built from the estimates (the plug-in portfolio) performs badly out of sample: its weights are noisy and its realized utility is often far below the theoretical optimum. A long literature asks how to choose portfolio rules that take this estimation risk into account; Kan and Zhou (2007) treat the case with a risk-free asset.
Kan, Wang and Zhou (2022) study the case without a risk-free asset, where the investor must be fully invested in N risky assets. There the optimal portfolio splits into the global minimum-variance (GMV) portfolio plus a scaled zero-investment portfolio, and estimation errors enter the two parts very differently. Their §2 derives the exact expected out-of-sample utility of the family of rules that rescale the estimated zero-investment part, and the coefficient that maximizes it. This mission formalizes that derivation.
Setting
An investor chooses weights w∈RN with 1N′w=1 to maximize the mean-variance utility
U(w)=w′μ−2γw′Σw,
where γ>0 is the risk-aversion coefficient and Σ is positive definite. The population quantities that matter are the GMV variance σg2=1/(1N′Σ−11N), the GMV mean μg=1N′Σ−1μσg2, and the squared slope of the asymptote of the minimum-variance frontier, ψ2=μ′Σ−1μ−μg2/σg2≥0.
The returns r1,…,rh of an estimation window of length h are independent and identically distributed N(μ,Σ). The maximum-likelihood estimators are μ^t=h1∑srs and Σ^t=h1∑s(rs−μ^t)(rs−μ^t)′. From them come the sample GMV portfolio and the sample zero-investment portfolio
w^g,t=1N′Σ^t−11NΣ^t−11N,w^z,t=Σ^t−1(μ^t−1Nμ^g,t),
with μ^g,t=1N′Σ^t−1μ^t/(1N′Σ^t−11N). For a constant combining coefficient c~ the paper considers
w^t(c~)=w^g,t+γc~w^z,t;
c~=1 is the plug-in rule. The expected out-of-sample utility E[U(w^t(c~))] evaluates U at the true μ, Σ and averages over the sample. The five random quantities μg,t=w^g,t′μ, μz,t=w^z,t′μ, σg,t2=w^g,t′Σw^g,t, σz,t2=w^z,t′Σw^z,t and σgz,t=w^g,t′Σw^z,t determine it.
Formalization targets
Goal: the optimal combining coefficient (§2.3, eqs. (20)–(21))
For N≥2 and h>N+3, with
k=h(h−2)(h−N)(h−N−3),c~∗=ψ2+hN−1kψ2,
the coefficient c~∗ is the unique maximizer of c~↦E[U(w^t(c~))] over R, and 0≤c~∗<1, with c~∗>0 when ψ2>0.
Lemma 1 (eq. (17))
For h>N+3 and every constant c~,
E[U(w^t(c~))]=μg−2(h−N−1)γ(h−2)σg2+γ(h−N−1)h[c~ψ2−2(h−N)(h−N−3)c~2(h−2)(hψ2+N−1)].
The moments (A9)–(A13) and the auxiliary moments
E[μg,t]=μg,E[μz,t]=h−N−1hψ2,E[σg,t2]=h−N−1(h−2)σg2,
E[σz,t2]=(h−N)(h−N−1)(h−N−3)h(h−2)(hψ2+N−1),E[σgz,t]=0,
together with the first and second moments of the auxiliary variables y1, y2 of Proposition 1 that the proof of Lemma 1 uses.
Significance
The result gives a closed-form, implementable-in-principle correction to the plug-in rule: since c~∗<1, the investor should always under-weight the estimated zero-investment portfolio, by a factor that depends only on h, N and ψ2. Replacing ψ2 by an adjusted estimator gives the paper's feasible rules (§2.4, §3), which are compared empirically in §4. The moment formulas (A9)–(A13) are of independent use: they give the exact out-of-sample mean and variance of the sample GMV and zero-investment portfolios, which recur in the shrinkage literature (for instance Lassance, Martín-Utrera and Simaan, 2024, who build on this paper's Proposition 1).
The result is proved in the paper, but the proof rests on Proposition 1, a stochastic representation of the out-of-sample moments whose detailed proof is in an online appendix. No machine-checked proof exists. On Prove2Me, Proposition 1 is posed (Open) as RiskEU.OOSUVar.kan_representation in Lassance et al.'s restatement, together with special cases (eq_IA60, eq_IA49) of the combinations μg,t+(κ/γ)μz,t and of the portfolio variance for κ∈[0,1] and h>N+7. The closed-form vertex of the quadratic (17) is already proved there (RiskEU.RobustShrink.proposition_IA_1_3). What this mission adds is the statement about the actual expectation over the Gaussian sample, for all real c~, under the paper's own threshold h>N+3, with uniqueness of the maximizer.
Difficulty
Once Lemma 1 is available, the goal is the vertex of a concave quadratic. The difficulty is Lemma 1 itself: computing expectations of quadratic forms in Σ^t−1 and in the normalized vector Σ^t−11N/(1N′Σ^t−11N). The weights are ratios of dependent random quantities, so linearity of expectation does not apply directly, and inverse-Wishart moment formulas alone do not cover the ratio in w^g,t. The threshold h>N+3 is Lemma 1's hypothesis; the factor h−N−3 in the denominator of (A12) shows that it is what keeps the expected variance of the estimated zero-investment portfolio finite, so integrability is part of the content.
Formalization scope
The model is the published definition RiskEU.OOSUVar.Setting: Market N carries μ, Σ, γ; sigmaG2, muG, psi2, U, sampleMean, sampleCov (divided by h), wHatG, wHatZ and IsGaussianSample are the objects above (that setting calls the window T; here it is h). The auxiliary family of Proposition 1 and y1, y2 come from the published RiskEU.OOSUVar.KanRepresentation. The mission's own definitions (KanCombine.Optimal.Model) add the standing assumptions, the combining portfolio, the five sample moments, the expected utility, k and c~∗.
Conventions committed to:
- N≥2, Σ≻0 and γ>0 are explicit hypotheses (implicit in the paper); h>N+3 is Lemma 1's. The y-moment milestone also assumes N>3, as Proposition 1 does.
- c~ ranges over all of R, and "the optimal value" is stated as a unique maximizer.
- Every expectation identity asserts integrability: a Lean Bochner integral of a non-integrable function is 0.
- Lean's matrix inverse is 0 on singular matrices; Σ^t is almost surely nonsingular for h>N, so this does not change any expectation.
- The page's "0<c~∗<1" fails at ψ2=0, where c~∗=0; the goal states 0≤c~∗<1 and c~∗>0 under ψ2>0.
The goal is about the integral over the Gaussian sample. Stating it about the closed-form right-hand side of (17) would reduce it to the vertex of a quadratic, which is already proved, and is ruled out. The hypotheses are satisfiable: N=2, h=6, μ=(0,1), Σ=I, γ=1 meets them with the product Gaussian sample, and gives c~∗=1/8.
A complete development needs Wishart and inverse-Wishart theory (the Bartlett decomposition, moments of chi-squared ratios) and a formal version of Proposition 1. These are reusable well beyond this mission; contributions proving (A9)–(A13) by any route, including directly from inverse-Wishart moments, are welcome.
Selected references
- R. Kan, X. Wang and G. Zhou, Optimal portfolio choice with estimation risk: No risk-free asset case, Management Science 68(3), 2022 (cited from the submitted manuscript, November 2020). https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2021.3989 ; https://ssrn.com/abstract=2819254
- R. Kan and G. Zhou, Optimal portfolio choice with parameter uncertainty, Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis 42(3), 2007. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0022109000004129
- H. Markowitz, Portfolio selection, Journal of Finance 7(1), 1952. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-6261.1952.tb01525.x
- N. Lassance, A. Martín-Utrera and M. Simaan, The risk of expected utility under parameter uncertainty, Management Science, 2024. https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2023.00178
- R. J. Muirhead, Aspects of Multivariate Statistical Theory, Wiley, 1982. https://doi.org/10.1002/9780470316559