<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><p>In the field of portfolio management the focus has been on the out-of-sample estimation of the covariance matrix mainly because the estimation of expected return is much more challenging. However, recent research efforts have not only tried to improve the estimation of risk parameters by expanding the analysis beyond the mean-variance setting but also by testing whether risk measures can be used as proxies for the expected return in the stock market. In this research, we test the standard deviation (measure of total volatility) and the semi-deviation (measure of downside risk) as proxies for the expected market return in the illiquid and undeveloped Croatian stock market in the period from January 2005 until November 2017. In such an environment, the application of the proposed methodology yielded poor results, which helps explain the failure of the out-of-sample estimation of the maximum Sharpe ratio portfolio in earlier research in the Croatian equity market.</p></abstract>

In the field of portfolio management the focus has been on the out-of-sample estimation of the covariance matrix mainly because the estimation of expected return is much more challenging. However, recent research efforts have not only tried to improve the estimation of risk parameters by expanding the analysis beyond the mean-variance setting but also by testing whether risk measures can be used as proxies for the expected return in the stock market. In this research, we test the standard deviation (measure of total volatility) and the semi-deviation (measure of downside risk) as proxies for the expected market return in the illiquid and undeveloped Croatian stock market in the period from January 2005 until November 2017. In such an environment, the application of the proposed methodology yielded poor results, which helps explain the failure of the out-of-sample estimation of the maximum Sharpe ratio portfolio in earlier research in the Croatian equity market.

Application of semi-deviation as a proxy for the expected return estimation in the Croatian equity market

Croatian Review of Economic, Business and Social Statistics

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License.

In the field of portfolio management the focus has been on the out-of-sample estimation of the covariance matrix mainly because the estimation of expected...

Application of semi-deviation as a proxy for the expected return estimation in the Croatian equity market

Published Online: May 27, 2019

Page range: 9 - 20

Received: May 11, 2018

Accepted: Apr 02, 2019

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/crebss-2019-0002

Keywords
expected return estimation, illiquid and undeveloped equity market, semi-deviation

© 2019 Denis Dolinar et al., published by Sciendo

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License.

Application of semi-deviation as a proxy for the expected return estimation in the Croatian equity market

Published Online: May 27, 2019

Page range: 9 - 20

Received: May 11, 2018

Accepted: Apr 02, 2019

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/crebss-2019-0002

Keywordsexpected return estimation, illiquid and undeveloped equity market, semi-deviation

© 2019 Denis Dolinar et al., published by Sciendo

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License.

Keywords
expected return estimation, illiquid and undeveloped equity market, semi-deviation