Mean-variance portfolio rebalancing with transaction costs and funding changes

Investment portfolios should be rebalanced to take account of changing market conditions and changes in funding. Standard mean-variance (MV) portfolio selection methods are not appropriate for portfolio rebalancing, as the initial portfolio, change in funding and transaction costs are not considered. A quadratic mixed integer programming portfolio rebalancing model, which takes account of these factors is developed in this paper. The transaction costs in this portfolio rebalancing model are composed of fixed charges and variable costs, including the market impact costs associated with large market trades of individual securities, where these variable transaction costs are assumed to be non-linear functions of traded value. The use of this model is demonstrated and it is shown that when initial portfolio, funding changes and transaction costs are taken into account in portfolio construction and rebalancing, MV efficient portfolios that include risk-free lending do not have the structure expected from portfolio theory. Journal of the Operational Research Society (2011) 62, 667–676. doi:10.1057/jors.2009.148 Published online 15 December 2010