In this paper we address three main objections of behavioral finance to the theory of rational finance, considered as “anomalies” the theory of rational finance cannot explain: (i) Predictability of asset returns; (ii) The Equity Premium; (iii) The Volatility Puzzle. We offer resolutions of...

The use of mixture distributions for modeling asset returns has a long history in finance. New methods of demonstrating support for the presence of mixtures in the multivariate case are provided. The use of a two-component multivariate normal mixture distribution, coupled with shrinkage via a...

The univariate collapsing method (UCM) for portfolio optimization is based on obtaining the predictive mean and a risk measure such as variance or expected shortfall of the univariate pseudo-return series generated from a given set of portfolio weights and multivariate set of assets under...

Empirical evidence suggests that asset returns correlate more strongly in bear markets than conventional correlation estimates imply. We propose a method for determining complete tail-correlation matrices based on Value-at-Risk (VaR) estimates. We demonstrate how to obtain more effi cient...

A new model class for univariate asset returns is proposed which involves the use of mixtures of stable Paretian distributions, and readily lends itself to use in a multivariate context for portfolio selection. The model nests numerous ones currently in use, and is shown to outperform all its...

This paper shows how independent component analysis can be used to estimate the generalized orthogonal GARCH model in a fraction of the time otherwise required. The proposed method is a two-step procedure, separating the estimation of the correlation structure from that of the univariate...