A Simple View on the Interval and Fuzzy Portfolio Selection Problems

In this paper, first we show that the variance used in the Markowitz’s mean-variance model for the portfolio selection with its numerous modifications often does not properly present the risk of portfolio. Therefore, we propose another treating of portfolio risk as the measure of possibility to earn unacceptable low profits of portfolio and a simple mathematical formalization of this measure. In a similar way, we treat the criterion of portfolio’s return maximization as the measure of possibility to get a maximal profit. As the result, we formulate the portfolio selection problem as a bicriteria optimization task. Then, we study the properties of the developed approach using critical examples of portfolios with interval and fuzzy valued returns. The α-cuts representation of fuzzy returns was used. To validate the proposed method, we compare the results we got using it with those obtained with the use of fuzzy versions of seven widely reputed methods for portfolio selection. As in our approach we deal with the bicriteria task, the three most popular methods for local criteria aggregation are compared using the known example of fuzzy portfolio consist of five assets. It is shown that the results we got using our approach to the interval and fuzzy portfolio selection reflect better the essence of this task than those obtained by widely reputed traditional methods for portfolio selection in the fuzzy setting.