Portfolio rebalancing with realization utility

Author / Creator

Dai, Min

Available as

Online

Summary

We develop a model where a realization-utility investor (Barberis and Xiong, 2009, 2012; Ingersoll and Jin, 2013) optimally targets her liquid-illiquid wealth ratio at a constant w∗. By saving in t...

We develop a model where a realization-utility investor (Barberis and Xiong, 2009, 2012; Ingersoll and Jin, 2013) optimally targets her liquid-illiquid wealth ratio at a constant w∗. By saving in the risk-free asset (w∗ > 0), she makes smaller bets in the illiquid asset and realizes gains/losses more frequently. By leveraging (w∗ < 0), she makes bets larger than her equity and realizes gains/losses less frequently. For a discontinuous/jump-diffusion price process, the solution features four regions: loss-realization, gain-realization, and two disconnected (deep-loss and normal) holding regions. We generate a quantitatively significant non-monotonic propensity to realize losses consistent with evidence.

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