Post Selection Estimation of Sharpe Ratios

Fuente: arXiv
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Auteur principal: Pav, Steven E.
Format: Preprint
Publié: 2026
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author Pav, Steven E.
author_facet Pav, Steven E.
contents We consider the problem of estimating the true Sharpe ratio of an asset selected for having the highest observed in-sample Sharpe ratio among many assets. We discuss estimators based on the polyhedral lemma, James Stein shrinkage, debiasing the expected maximum Sharpe ratio, thresholding and empirical Bayes. We test these estimators in simulations, computing bias and root mean square error across different values of sample size, number of assets, and spread and shape of population Sharpe ratios. We also compute rank correlation of the estimators against the underlying quantity, simulating how these estimators might be used to compare or rank the output of different teams which perform this selection process. We find that the James Stein estimator provides the best performance across many different realistic values of the relevant parameters, followed by the GMLEB estimator of Jiang and Zhang. These results are fairly robust to correlation of asset returns, with some caveats.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2606_01650
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Post Selection Estimation of Sharpe Ratios
Pav, Steven E.
Portfolio Management
Trading and Market Microstructure
Applications
Methodology
91G10
G.3
We consider the problem of estimating the true Sharpe ratio of an asset selected for having the highest observed in-sample Sharpe ratio among many assets. We discuss estimators based on the polyhedral lemma, James Stein shrinkage, debiasing the expected maximum Sharpe ratio, thresholding and empirical Bayes. We test these estimators in simulations, computing bias and root mean square error across different values of sample size, number of assets, and spread and shape of population Sharpe ratios. We also compute rank correlation of the estimators against the underlying quantity, simulating how these estimators might be used to compare or rank the output of different teams which perform this selection process. We find that the James Stein estimator provides the best performance across many different realistic values of the relevant parameters, followed by the GMLEB estimator of Jiang and Zhang. These results are fairly robust to correlation of asset returns, with some caveats.
title Post Selection Estimation of Sharpe Ratios
topic Portfolio Management
Trading and Market Microstructure
Applications
Methodology
91G10
G.3
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2606.01650