Portfolio Selection: An Extreme Value Approach

We show theoretically that lower tail dependence (χ), a measure of the probability that a portfolio will suffer large losses given that the market does, contains important information for risk-averse investors. We then estimate χ for a sample of DJIA stocks and show that it differs systematically from other risk measures including variance, semi-variance, skewness, kurtosis, beta, and coskewness. In out-of-sample tests, portfolios constructed to have low values of χ outperform the market index, the mean return of the stocks in our sample, and portfolios with high values of χ. Our results indicate that χ is conceptually important for risk-averse investors, differs substantially from other risk measures, and provides useful information for portfolio selection.