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Portfolio Choice with Path-Dependent Preferences

December 16, 2020
By: David Turkington, Mark Kritzman, State Street Associates
Summary

By Mark Kritzman, Ding Li, Grace (Tiantian) Qiu, and David Turkington.

 

Published in the Financial Analysts Journal, December 2020.

 

We show why mapping sequences of economic outcomes leads to a richer understanding of scenarios, probabilities and portfolio returns.

 

Conventional methods of scenario analysis are often oversimplified, focusing only on outcomes and ignoring what happens along the way. We propose that investors define scenarios as paths of economic variables, which are compared to past episodes in history using a statistic called the Mahalanobis distance. We apply this methodology to hypothetical economic trajectories for 2020 and beyond – such as V- or W-shaped recessions, depression and stagflation – to see what 90 years of history imply for the performance of stocks and bonds in the United States.

 

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Author Bios
David Turkington
David Turkington is Senior Managing Director and Head of State Street Associates, State Street Markets’ decades-long partnership with renowned academics that produces innovative research on markets and investment strategy. David is a frequent presenter at industry conferences, has published more than 40 research articles in a range of journals, and serves on the editorial board of the Journal of Alternative Investments. He is the co-author of three books including “Asset Allocation: From Theory to Practice and Beyond” and “Prediction Revisited: The Importance of Observation.” His published research has received the 2010 Graham and Dodd Scroll Award, five Bernstein-Fabozzi/Jacobs-Levy Outstanding Article Awards, the 2013 Peter L. Bernstein Award for best paper in an Institutional Investor journal, the 2021 and 2023 Roger F. Murray First Prize for outstanding research presented at the Q Group seminars, and the 2022 and 2023 Harry Markowitz awards for best paper in the Journal of Investment Management.
Mark Kritzman
Mark is a founding partner of State Street Associates and senior lecturer at the MIT Sloan School of Management. As the author of seven books and more than 100 research articles, Mark has pioneered new approaches to asset allocation, investment strategy, and predictive analytics. He received the James R. Vertin award from the CFA Institute recognizing the relevance and value of his research to the investment profession. Mark’s contributions provide State Street clients with novel practical methods to improve the effectiveness of predictions and investment processes.
State Street Associates
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1. Peter L. Bernstein Award for Best Article in an Institutional Investor Journal in 2013; Bernstein-Fabozzi/Jacobs-Levy Award for Outstanding Article in the Journal of Portfolio Management in 2006, 2009, 2011, 2013 (2), 2014, 2015, 2016, 2021; Graham & Dodd Scroll Award for article in the Financial Analysts Journal in 2002 and 2010. Roger F. Murray First Prize for Research Presented at the Q Group Conference in 2012, 2021, 2023. Harry M. Markowitz Award for Best Paper in the Journal of Investment Management in 2022, 2023. Doriot Award for Best Private Equity Research Paper in 2022.