IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/iim/iimawp/14648.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Equity portfolio diversification: how many stocks are enough? Evidence from India

Author

Listed:
  • Raju, Rajan
  • Agarwalla, Sobhesh Kumar

Abstract

How many stocks are required to reduce unsystematic risk significantly is an important question for investors. While there is a large body of research on the subject in the United States, there is little formal work on this question in India. We show that a 15-20 stock portfolio, the traditional market rule-of-thumb for a diversified portfolio, is likely inadequate to minimise unsystematic risk. We show that an investor could target to reduce diversifiable risk by 90% with a 90% confidence with a portfolio of 40-50 stocks. We build a practical framework that serves as a baseline for investors to target a specific reduction in diversifiable unsystematic risk at a chosen confidence level.

Suggested Citation

  • Raju, Rajan & Agarwalla, Sobhesh Kumar, 2021. "Equity portfolio diversification: how many stocks are enough? Evidence from India," IIMA Working Papers WP 2021-02-02, Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad, Research and Publication Department.
    • Handle: RePEc:iim:iimawp:14648
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.iima.ac.in/sites/default/files/rnpfiles/8646889802021-02-02.pdf
    File Function: English Version
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Alexeev, Vitali & Tapon, Francis, 2013. "Equity Portfolio Diversification: How Many Stocks are Enough? Evidence from Five Developed Markets," Working Papers 2013-16, University of Tasmania, Tasmanian School of Business and Economics, revised 20 Nov 2013.
    2. Ledoit, Olivier & Wolf, Michael, 2003. "Improved estimation of the covariance matrix of stock returns with an application to portfolio selection," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 10(5), pages 603-621, December.
    3. Statman, Meir, 1987. "How Many Stocks Make a Diversified Portfolio?," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 22(3), pages 353-363, September.
    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. Reis, Pedro Nogueira & Pinto, António Pedro Soares, 2024. "Unlocking portfolio resilient and persistent risk: A holistic approach to unveiling potential grounds," The North American Journal of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 73(C).
    2. Azra Zaimovic & Adna Omanovic & Almira Arnaut-Berilo, 2021. "How Many Stocks Are Sufficient for Equity Portfolio Diversification? A Review of the Literature," JRFM, MDPI, vol. 14(11), pages 1-30, November.
    3. Charles Shaw, 2022. "Portfolio Diversification Revisited," Papers 2204.13398, arXiv.org.

    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. Azra Zaimovic & Adna Omanovic & Almira Arnaut-Berilo, 2021. "How Many Stocks Are Sufficient for Equity Portfolio Diversification? A Review of the Literature," JRFM, MDPI, vol. 14(11), pages 1-30, November.
    2. Charles Shaw, 2022. "Portfolio Diversification Revisited," Papers 2204.13398, arXiv.org.
    3. Jiawen Xu & Yixuan Li & Kai Liu & Tao Chen, 2023. "Portfolio selection: from under-diversification to concentration," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 64(4), pages 1539-1557, April.
    4. Oikonomou, Ioannis & Platanakis, Emmanouil & Sutcliffe, Charles, 2018. "Socially responsible investment portfolios: Does the optimization process matter?," The British Accounting Review, Elsevier, vol. 50(4), pages 379-401.
    5. Hannart, Alexis & Naveau, Philippe, 2014. "Estimating high dimensional covariance matrices: A new look at the Gaussian conjugate framework," Journal of Multivariate Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 131(C), pages 149-162.
    6. Cui, Xueting & Zhu, Shushang & Sun, Xiaoling & Li, Duan, 2013. "Nonlinear portfolio selection using approximate parametric Value-at-Risk," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 37(6), pages 2124-2139.
    7. Giovanni Bonaccolto & Massimiliano Caporin & Sandra Paterlini, 2018. "Asset allocation strategies based on penalized quantile regression," Computational Management Science, Springer, vol. 15(1), pages 1-32, January.
    8. Candelon, B. & Hurlin, C. & Tokpavi, S., 2012. "Sampling error and double shrinkage estimation of minimum variance portfolios," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 19(4), pages 511-527.
    9. Migliavacca, Milena & Goodell, John W. & Paltrinieri, Andrea, 2023. "A bibliometric review of portfolio diversification literature," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 90(C).
    10. Torben G. Andersen & Tim Bollerslev & Peter Christoffersen & Francis X. Diebold, 2007. "Practical Volatility and Correlation Modeling for Financial Market Risk Management," NBER Chapters, in: The Risks of Financial Institutions, pages 513-544, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    11. Fan, Jianqing & Liao, Yuan & Shi, Xiaofeng, 2015. "Risks of large portfolios," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 186(2), pages 367-387.
    12. Kristjan Liivamägi, 2015. "Investor Education and Portfolio Diversification on the Stock Market," Research in Economics and Business: Central and Eastern Europe, Tallinn School of Economics and Business Administration, Tallinn University of Technology, vol. 7(1).
    13. Atanda Mustapha Saidi, 2017. "Working Paper 273 - Stock (Mis)pricing and investment dynamics in Africa," Working Paper Series 2390, African Development Bank.
    14. Sven Husmann & Antoniya Shivarova & Rick Steinert, 2019. "Cross-validated covariance estimators for high-dimensional minimum-variance portfolios," Papers 1910.13960, arXiv.org, revised Oct 2020.
    15. Jianqing Fan & Xu Han, 2017. "Estimation of the false discovery proportion with unknown dependence," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series B, Royal Statistical Society, vol. 79(4), pages 1143-1164, September.
    16. Wang, Christina Dan & Chen, Zhao & Lian, Yimin & Chen, Min, 2022. "Asset selection based on high frequency Sharpe ratio," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 227(1), pages 168-188.
    17. Tasca, Paolo & Mavrodiev, Pavlin & Schweitzer, Frank, 2014. "Quantifying the impact of leveraging and diversification on systemic risk," Journal of Financial Stability, Elsevier, vol. 15(C), pages 43-52.
    18. David R. Bell & Olivier Ledoit & Michael Wolf, 2012. "A new portfolio formation approach to mispricing of marketing performance indicators with an application to customer satisfaction," ECON - Working Papers 079, Department of Economics - University of Zurich, revised Dec 2013.
    19. László PáL, 2022. "Asset Allocation Strategies Using Covariance Matrix Estimators," Acta Universitatis Sapientiae, Economics and Business, Sciendo, vol. 10(1), pages 133-144, September.
    20. David Bradfield & Brian Munro, 2017. "The number of stocks required for effective portfolio diversification: the South African case," South African Journal of Accounting Research, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 31(1), pages 44-59, January.

    More about this item

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:iim:iimawp:14648. 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/eciimin.html .

    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.