This paper develops a novel hybrid framework that integrates clustering-enhanced Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) with stretching techniques to solve Markowitz's quadratic portfolio optimization problem. The proposed approach avoids local optima traps that plague traditional optimization...

How do investors perceive and navigate the emerging geoeconomic risk? We identify firm-level geoeconomic risk using supply-chain links to Chinese firms targeted by U.S. export controls. Affected U.S. suppliers experience negative abnormal returns around policy announcements. These shocks...

This study examines the effect of the investment portfolio structure on insurers' solvency, as measured by the Solvency Capital Requirement ratio. An empirical sample of 88 EU-based insurance groups was analyzed to provide robust evidence of the portfolio's impact on the Solvency Capital...

Prior research on the demand for life insurance in household portfolio holdings has not made a clear distinction between portfolio shifts resulting from active allocation decisions and those resulting from passive acceptance. Our study examines the relationship between household portfolio...

Defined benefit (DB) pension plans are a primary type of pension schemes with the sponsor assuming most of the risks. Longevity-indexed bonds have been used to hedge or transfer risks in pension plans. Our objective is to study an aggregated DB pension plan's optimal risk management problem...

Deriving an optimal asset allocation hinges crucially on the quality of inputs used in the optimization. If the vector of expected returns and the covariance matrix are known with certainty, mean-variance optimization produces optimal portfolios. If, however, these parameters are estimated with...

In this study, we unpack the ESG ratings of four prominent agencies in Europe and find that (i) each single E, S, G pillar explains the overall ESG score differently, (ii) there is a low co-movement between the three E, S, G pillars and (iii) there are specific ESG Key Performance Indicators...

This article combines the traditional definition of portfolio risk with minimum-spanning-tree-based "interconnectedness risk" to improve equal risk contribution portfolio performance. We use betweenness centrality to measure an asset's importance in a market graph (network). After filtering the...

This study explores an innovative approach to portfolio optimization, bridging traditional Modern Portfolio Theory (MPT) with advanced Machine Learning techniques. We start by recognizing the significance of Markowitz's model in MPT and quickly proceed to focus on the Hierarchical Risk Parity...

The financial environment is under great pressure as a result of dynamically changing macroeconomic factors. In this situation, full of uncertainty, understanding the relationship between macroeconomic factors and financial markets becomes a key issue. Market analysts and investors are...

This study examines how effective the Dogs of the Dow (DoD) investment strategy, popular in the USA, was for the Polish blue-chip stock market between 2002-2023. This strategy involves investing the same amount of funds each year in shares of ten companies called Dogs of Dow with the highest...

This paper examines the relationship between traditional gold (XAU) and its tokenized counterparts (PAXG and XAUT), providing an empirical assessment of how digital representations of real-world assets align with their underlying benchmarks. Using multi-year time series data, the study evaluates...

This study examines dynamic interdependencies and risk transmission among major cryptocurrencies and traditional financial assets, including Bitcoin, Ethereum, U.S. equities, and gold, over the period 2017-2024. Particular attention is given to the structural shift associated with the 2024 U.S....

In this paper we employ the natural experiment of German Division and Reunification in order to study the effect of institutional reform on the decision to hold risky assets. We present empirical evidence indicating that even 16 years after German Reunification risky portfolios of East and West...

As global climate and sustainable challenges gain more attention, green finance has emerged as a significant focus of worldwide financial reform, with green bonds serving as a key indicator. Retail investors, as an important part of the financial market, have a significant impact on the...

In deregulated electricity markets, Generation Companies (GENCOs) are exposed to substantial financial risk due to volatile and uncertain electricity prices. Traditional generation asset valuation approaches, which rely primarily on expected profit, fail to adequately capture downside risk under...

We study how sustainability disclosure regulation affects mutual fund flows and portfolio choices, accounting for investor heterogeneity. Guided by a model of ESG investing under uncertainty, we exploit the introduction of the European Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation (SFDR) as a...

This study builds on the concept of loss tolerance by introducing investment grip, a behavioral interpretation that captures investors' commitment to long-term objectives under adverse market conditions. While loss tolerance traditionally measures the maximum financial loss an investor can...

Despite the economic relevance of climate-transition risk, firm-level carbon exposure often fails to appear as a robustly priced factor when ESG measures and sustainability shocks are conflated. This study examines whether carbon exposure is conditionally priced in European equity returns using...

Managers of actively managed funds do not maintain a constant investment style. Instead, their factor loadings change over time. These changes are especially large following quarters with extreme returns and fund flows and arise from both active portfolio reallocations and passive style drift....

Our econometric (cointegration) analysis of the Swiss franc US dollar exchange rates over the period 1974 - 2025 provides strong evidence for a negative bias of the forward rate as predictor of the spot rate for the years up to 2007, which disappears with data from 2008 onwards. This implies...

We put forward a Dynamic Regularized Parametric (DRP) approach for active portfolio policies. We build upon the parametric policy framework of Brandt et al. (2009) that directly links the portfolio weights to a limited set of asset characteristics. This yields a parsimonious specification that...

We study how different ways of incorporating environmental, social, and governance (ESG) objectives into mean–variance portfolio choice affect diversification. A commonly used linear ESG adjustment tilts portfolios toward high-scoring assets but, under standard long-only constraints,...

In this paper, we study an intertemporal utility maximization problem in which an investor chooses consumption and portfolio strategies in the presence of a stochastic factor and a no-borrowing constraint. In the spirit of the Kim-Omberg model, the stochastic factor represents the excess return...