Scientific Essay from the year 2021 in the subject Business economics - Investment and Finance, , language: English, abstract: Investments in money and capital markets involve different loss potentials that market participants should be able to manage. Below follows an overview and comparison of selected strategies to manage these risks. Portfolio insurance (PI) strategies were developed in the 1980s. They are used to hedge portfolios or individual investments against price losses. The volume of assets hedged with these strategies is significant. Different forms of individual strategies have developed over the years. Risk quantification and Value at Risk (VAR) strategies emerged around the same time. Risks of individual investments or portfolios were measured and different strategies were developed to take them into account in Value at Risk optimised portfolios (VaRoP). VaRoP is a strategy that calculates an optimal portfolio taking into account a given or permissible maximum VAR. Both strategies are intended to protect portfolios from losses in value. Their similarities and differences as well as their successes are presented and summarised in this paper. Their applicability in practice is also examined.

This study presents a systematic comparison of portfolio insurance strategies. In order to test for statistical significance of the differences in downside performance risk measures between pairs of portfolio insurance strategies, we use a bootstrap-based hypothesis test. Our comparison of different strategies considers the following distinguishing characteristics: static versus dynamic; initial wealth versus cumulated wealth protection; model-based versus model-free; and strong floor compliance versus probabilistic floor compliance. Our results show that the classical portfolio insurance strategies synthetic put and CPPI provide superior downside protection compared to a simple stop-loss trading rule, also resulting in significantly higher Omega ratios. Analyzing more recently developed strategies, neither the TIPP strategy (as an 'improved' CPPI strategy) nor the dynamic VaR-strategy provide significant improvements over the more traditional portfolio insurance strategies. The attractiveness of the dynamic VaR-strategy strongly depends on the quality of the estimates for the required input parameters, in particular, the equity risk premium. However, if an investor possesses superior forecasting skills, other active (market timing) strategies may exist which generate higher (risk-adjusted) returns compared to a protected passive stock market investment.

We compare the performances of the two standard portfolio insurance methods: the Option Based Portfolio Insurance (OBPI) and the Constant Proportion Portfolio Insurance (CPPI), when the volatility of the stock index is stochastic. In this framework, we provide a quite general formula for the CPPI portfolio value. We use criteria such as comparison of payoffs functions at maturity and various quantiles. We emphasize in particular the role of the insured percentage of the initial investment.

In this article we use stochastic simulation methods to study the performance of a number of different dynamic portfolio insurance strategies, including option replicating portfolio insurance (ORPI), constant proportion portfolio insurance (CPPI) and a modified stop-loss (MSLI) strategy. We assume the underlying portfolio to be the Samp;P 500 tracking portfolio with all dividends reinvested upon receipt. The initial time to maturity is one year. Although the differences are mostly small, our results show that ORPI typically offers more attractive results than CPPI or MSLI. Adjusting the floor rule to lock in intermediate profits or adding a constant horizon feature does not lead to superior results.