QUADRATIC PROGRAMMING: AN OPTIMIZATION TOOL FOR BUILDING GLOBAL MINIMUM VARIANCE PORTFOLIO WITH NO SHORT SALE

Quantitative method in portfolio selection is a fascinating issue to make a decision in investment. Portfolio optimization is a very important to manage investment risk. There are many papers dealing with the Markowitz portfolio model, but not all of the papers studied about positive weight portfolio or no short sale constrained portfolio. Positive weight portfolio describes that short sale is allowed for the investor. While, short sale is banned in a certain economic condition due to its ability in decreasing stock market index. Besides, Islamic capital market does not allow speculative transaction such as short selling. Hence, portfolio with no short sale constraint is needed. This study aims to build Global Minimum Variance Portfolio (GMVP) with no short sale constraint. The GMVP with positive asset allocation based on Markowitz model can be built by using quadratic programming with interior point method. The main theory applied in this research is Markowitz portfolio optimization model. Mean and variance of stocks closing price are two things that should be considered in this model. The result shows that the positive weight of GMVP includes 0% of ADRO shares; 2, 65% of ANTM shares; 0% of CTRA shares; 30,27% of EXCL shares; 37,21% of ICBP shares; 3,37% of INCO shares; 13,89% of KLBF shares; 0% of PGAS shares; and 12,61% of PTBA shares.

Impact of ESG Rating of Companies on the Portfolio Performance

Socially responsible investing is becoming more popular among people because people are becoming more concerned about the environment and society. Socially responsible investors screen the company by considering the ESG factors. The question raced is whether socially responsible investing improves the portfolio performance and how the funds perform during uncertain times like the Covid-19 pandemic. Since many critics of ESG funds say that the ESG funds’ performance highly depends on Software and Service company stocks, so the relevance of Software and Service companies in the fund has been analyzed in this research. The portfolios have been formed by using the Markowitz mean-variance portfolio model, and the performance of the minimum variance portfolio has been studied. The fund performance has been analyzed using the Sharpe ratio, and the result concludes that the ESG fund performance with minimum variance has an abnormally high Sharpe Ratio of 10.8. A similar type of performance was identified during the Covid-19 pandemic. The abnormally high Sharpe ratio will encourage investors to move towards socially responsible investing.

Portfolio Construction of Energy-Related Assets

Portfolio construction is one of the most fatal issues of modern finance, which can effectively gain returns or reduce risks. This study constructs portfolios in energy-related assets. Specifically, the Monte Carlo simulations are carried out for a hundred thousand times in order to discover the efficient frontier and find the minimum variance and the maximum sharp ratio portfolio. According to the simulations, the American Electric Power possesses the largest share in minimum variance portfolio, while NextEra Energy for sharp ratio method. The results may benefit certain investor in financial markets and shed lights to focus more on portfolio allocation during constructing.