Forecasting Tangency Portfolios and Investing in the Minimum Euclidean Distance Portfolio to Maximize Out-of-Sample Sharpe Ratios

Fuente: arXiv
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Auteurs principaux: Alexander, Nolan, Scherer, William
Format: Preprint
Publié: 2026
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author Alexander, Nolan
Scherer, William
author_facet Alexander, Nolan
Scherer, William
contents We propose a novel model to achieve superior out-of-sample Sharpe ratios. While most research in asset allocation focuses on estimating the return vector and covariance matrix, the first component of our novel model instead forecasts the future tangency portfolio, and the second component then determines the optimal investment portfolio. First, to forecast the tangency portfolio, we forecast the efficient frontier by decomposing its functional form, a square root second-order polynomial, into three interpretable coefficients, which can then be used to calculate a forecasted tangency portfolio. These coefficients can be forecasted using vector autoregressions. Second, the model invests in the portfolio on the efficient frontier that is the minimum Euclidean distance from this forecasted tangency portfolio. A motivation for our approach is to address the limitation that the tangency portfolio only maximizes the Sharpe ratio when future returns and covariances are stationary, and can be directly estimated with historical data, which often does not hold in out-of-sample data. Our approach addresses this shortcoming in a novel way by forecasting the tangency portfolio, rather than estimating return and covariance. For empirical testing, we employ two sets of assets that span the market to demonstrate and validate the performance of this novel method.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2604_03948
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Forecasting Tangency Portfolios and Investing in the Minimum Euclidean Distance Portfolio to Maximize Out-of-Sample Sharpe Ratios
Alexander, Nolan
Scherer, William
Portfolio Management
Applications
We propose a novel model to achieve superior out-of-sample Sharpe ratios. While most research in asset allocation focuses on estimating the return vector and covariance matrix, the first component of our novel model instead forecasts the future tangency portfolio, and the second component then determines the optimal investment portfolio. First, to forecast the tangency portfolio, we forecast the efficient frontier by decomposing its functional form, a square root second-order polynomial, into three interpretable coefficients, which can then be used to calculate a forecasted tangency portfolio. These coefficients can be forecasted using vector autoregressions. Second, the model invests in the portfolio on the efficient frontier that is the minimum Euclidean distance from this forecasted tangency portfolio. A motivation for our approach is to address the limitation that the tangency portfolio only maximizes the Sharpe ratio when future returns and covariances are stationary, and can be directly estimated with historical data, which often does not hold in out-of-sample data. Our approach addresses this shortcoming in a novel way by forecasting the tangency portfolio, rather than estimating return and covariance. For empirical testing, we employ two sets of assets that span the market to demonstrate and validate the performance of this novel method.
title Forecasting Tangency Portfolios and Investing in the Minimum Euclidean Distance Portfolio to Maximize Out-of-Sample Sharpe Ratios
topic Portfolio Management
Applications
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.03948