IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/arx/papers/1506.02802.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Limits of Leverage

Author

Listed:
  • Paolo Guasoni
  • Eberhard Mayerhofer

Abstract

When trading incurs proportional costs, leverage can scale an asset's return only up to a maximum multiple, which is sensitive to its volatility and liquidity. In a model with one safe and one risky asset, with constant investment opportunities and proportional costs, we find strategies that maximize long term returns given average volatility. As leverage increases, rising rebalancing costs imply declining Sharpe ratios. Beyond a critical level, even returns decline. Holding the Sharpe ratio constant, higher asset volatility leads to superior returns through lower costs.

Suggested Citation

  • Paolo Guasoni & Eberhard Mayerhofer, 2015. "The Limits of Leverage," Papers 1506.02802, arXiv.org, revised Oct 2017.
    • Handle: RePEc:arx:papers:1506.02802
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://arxiv.org/pdf/1506.02802
    File Function: Latest version
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Andrea Frazzini & Lasse Heje Pedersen, 2022. "Embedded Leverage [Asset pricing with liquidity risk]," The Review of Asset Pricing Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 12(1), pages 1-52.
    2. Kevin Guo & Tim Leung, 2016. "Understanding the Tracking Errors of Commodity Leveraged ETFs," Papers 1610.09404, arXiv.org.
    3. Michael Taksar & Michael J. Klass & David Assaf, 1988. "A Diffusion Model for Optimal Portfolio Selection in the Presence of Brokerage Fees," Mathematics of Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 13(2), pages 277-294, May.
    4. Tang, Hongfei & Xu, Xiaoqing Eleanor, 2013. "Solving the Return Deviation Conundrum of Leveraged Exchange-Traded Funds," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 48(1), pages 309-342, February.
    5. Dumas, Bernard & Luciano, Elisa, 1991. "An Exact Solution to a Dynamic Portfolio Choice Problem under Transactions Costs," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 46(2), pages 577-595, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Ibrahim Ekren & Johannes Muhle-Karbe, 2017. "Portfolio Choice with Small Temporary and Transient Price Impact," Papers 1705.00672, arXiv.org, revised Apr 2020.
    2. Tim Leung & Hyungbin Park, 2017. "LONG-TERM GROWTH RATE OF EXPECTED UTILITY FOR LEVERAGED ETFs: MARTINGALE EXTRACTION APPROACH," International Journal of Theoretical and Applied Finance (IJTAF), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 20(06), pages 1-33, September.
    3. Ibrahim Ekren & Ren Liu & Johannes Muhle-Karbe, 2015. "Optimal Rebalancing Frequencies for Multidimensional Portfolios," Papers 1510.05097, arXiv.org, revised Sep 2017.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Jan Kallsen & Johannes Muhle-Karbe, 2013. "The General Structure of Optimal Investment and Consumption with Small Transaction Costs," Papers 1303.3148, arXiv.org, revised May 2015.
    2. Johannes Muhle-Karbe & Max Reppen & H. Mete Soner, 2016. "A Primer on Portfolio Choice with Small Transaction Costs," Papers 1612.01302, arXiv.org, revised May 2017.
    3. Stefan Gerhold & Johannes Muhle-Karbe & Walter Schachermayer, 2010. "The dual optimizer for the growth-optimal portfolio under transaction costs," Papers 1005.5105, arXiv.org, revised Oct 2010.
    4. Arjmandi, Nabi, 2023. "Optimal Portfolio Rebalancing with Sweep Under Transaction Cost," MPRA Paper 117162, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    5. Lukas Gonon & Johannes Muhle‐Karbe & Xiaofei Shi, 2021. "Asset pricing with general transaction costs: Theory and numerics," Mathematical Finance, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 31(2), pages 595-648, April.
    6. Changhui Choi & Bong-Gyu Jang & Changki Kim & Sang-youn Roh, 2016. "Net Contribution, Liquidity, and Optimal Pension Management," Journal of Risk & Insurance, The American Risk and Insurance Association, vol. 83(4), pages 913-948, December.
    7. Lukas Gonon & Johannes Muhle-Karbe & Xiaofei Shi, 2019. "Asset Pricing with General Transaction Costs: Theory and Numerics," Papers 1905.05027, arXiv.org, revised Apr 2020.
    8. Erhan Bayraktar & Leonid Dolinskyi & Yan Dolinsky, 2020. "Extended weak convergence and utility maximisation with proportional transaction costs," Finance and Stochastics, Springer, vol. 24(4), pages 1013-1034, October.
    9. Paolo Guasoni & Johannes Muhle-Karbe, 2012. "Portfolio Choice with Transaction Costs: a User's Guide," Papers 1207.7330, arXiv.org.
    10. Stefan Gerhold & Paolo Guasoni & Johannes Muhle-Karbe & Walter Schachermayer, 2014. "Transaction costs, trading volume, and the liquidity premium," Finance and Stochastics, Springer, vol. 18(1), pages 1-37, January.
    11. Christian Bayer & Bezirgen Veliyev, 2014. "Utility Maximization In A Binomial Model With Transaction Costs: A Duality Approach Based On The Shadow Price Process," International Journal of Theoretical and Applied Finance (IJTAF), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 17(04), pages 1-27.
    12. Stefan Gerhold & Paolo Guasoni & Johannes Muhle-Karbe & Walter Schachermayer, 2011. "Transaction Costs, Trading Volume, and the Liquidity Premium," Papers 1108.1167, arXiv.org, revised Jan 2013.
    13. Dylan Possamai & Guillaume Royer, 2014. "General indifference pricing with small transaction costs," Papers 1401.3261, arXiv.org, revised Apr 2015.
    14. Yingting Miao & Qiang Zhang, 2023. "Optimal Investment and Consumption Strategies with General and Linear Transaction Costs under CRRA Utility," Papers 2304.07672, arXiv.org.
    15. Stefano Baccarin & Daniele Marazzina, 2014. "Optimal impulse control of a portfolio with a fixed transaction cost," Central European Journal of Operations Research, Springer;Slovak Society for Operations Research;Hungarian Operational Research Society;Czech Society for Operations Research;Österr. Gesellschaft für Operations Research (ÖGOR);Slovenian Society Informatika - Section for Operational Research;Croatian Operational Research Society, vol. 22(2), pages 355-372, June.
    16. S. Gerhold & J. Muhle-Karbe & W. Schachermayer, 2013. "The dual optimizer for the growth-optimal portfolio under transaction costs," Finance and Stochastics, Springer, vol. 17(2), pages 325-354, April.
    17. Bruno Biais & Johan Hombert & Pierre-Olivier Weill, 2014. "Equilibrium Pricing and Trading Volume under Preference Uncertainty," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 81(4), pages 1401-1437.
    18. Dokuchaev, Nikolai, 2010. "Optimality of myopic strategies for multi-stock discrete time market with management costs," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 200(2), pages 551-556, January.
    19. Guo, Kevin & Leung, Tim, 2017. "Understanding the non-convergence of agricultural futures via stochastic storage costs and timing options," Journal of Commodity Markets, Elsevier, vol. 6(C), pages 32-49.
    20. Tim Leung & Brian Ward, 2015. "The golden target: analyzing the tracking performance of leveraged gold ETFs," Studies in Economics and Finance, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 32(3), pages 278-297, August.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:arx:papers:1506.02802. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: arXiv administrators (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://arxiv.org/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.