Portfolio Revisited Problem Statement

The investor from Tutorial 2 — Portfolio Allocation Model has $100,000 to invest in four assets. Below is a relisting of the investor’s expected annual returns, and the minimum and maximum amounts the investor is comfortable allocating to each investment.

Table 11. Sample investment requirements

Investment

Annual return

Lower bound

Upper bound

Money market fund

3%

$0

$50,000

Income fund

5%

$10,000

$25,000

Growth and income fund

7%

$0

$80,000

Aggressive growth fund

11%

$10,000

$100,000

When the investor maximized the portfolio return without regard to risk, OptQuest allocated almost all the money to the investment with the highest return. This strategy didn’t result in a portfolio that maintained risk at a manageable level. Only limiting the standard deviation of the total expected return generated a more diversified portfolio.

Efficient Frontier Analysis examines the reasons for this.