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The main purpose of this paper is to investigate whether Chinese investors can benefit from international diversification and where these benefits are to be found.

This paper applies an expanding optimization procedure, which is different from the econometric methods or Monte Carlo simulations adopted in many empirical investigations in the literature. The authors' analysis is based on various realized portfolios that are set up at different dates in the sample period.

Based on a stream of realized portfolios, the authors show that Chinese investors can gain substantially in terms of risk reduction as they venture into foreign markets, regardless of the region into which they choose to diversify and whether in‐sample or out‐of‐sample performance is evaluated. However, the optimal strategies under consideration cannot achieve higher out‐of‐sample expected returns and risk‐adjusted returns than does the domestic investment.

In contrast with those in the literature, the authors' analysis is based on the out‐of‐sample performance of a series of realized optimal portfolios. Their method can address time‐varying correlations that are ignored in most previous research. In addition, this method not only allows them to analyze sizes of diversification benefits but also enables them to examine the major characteristics of international portfolios to gauge the effectiveness of different diversification strategies.

The purpose of this chapter is to analyze the possible portfolio diversification opportunities between Asian Islamic market and other regions’ Islamic markets; namely USA, Europe, and BRIC. This study makes the initial attempt to fill in the gaps of previous studies by focusing on the proxies of global Islamic markets to identify the correlations among those selected markets by employing the recent econometric methodologies such as multivariate generalized autoregressive conditional heteroscedastic–dynamic conditional correlations (MGARCH–DCC), maximum overlap discrete wavelet transform (MODWT), and the continuous wavelet transform (CWT). By utilizing the MGARCH-DCC, this chapter tries to identify the strength of the time-varying correlation among the markets. However, to see the time-scale-dependent nature of these mentioned correlations, the authors utilized CWT. For robustness, the authors have applied MODWT methodology as well. The findings tend to indicate that the Asian investors have better portfolio diversification opportunities with the US markets, followed by the European markets. BRIC markets do not offer any portfolio diversification benefits, which may be explained partly by the fact that the Asian markets cover partially the same countries of BRIC markets, namely India and China. Considering the time horizon dimension, the results narrow down the portfolio diversification opportunities only to the short-term investment horizons. The very short-run investors (up to eight days only) can benefit through portfolio diversification, especially in the US and European markets. The above-mentioned results have policy implications for the Asian Islamic investors (e.g., Portfolio Management and Strategic Investment Management).

The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the literature in three ways: first, the authors investigate the impact of the sampling errors on optimal portfolio weights and on financial investment decision. Second, the authors advance a comparative analysis between various domestic and international diversification strategies to define a stochastic optimal choice. Third, the authors propose a new methodology combining the re-sampling method, stochastic optimization algorithm, and nonparametric stochastic dominance (SD) approach to analyze a stochastic optimal portfolio choice for risk-averse American investors who care about benefits of domestic diversification relative to international diversification. The authors propose a new portfolio optimization model involving SD constraints on the portfolio return rate. The authors define a portfolio with return dominating the benchmark portfolio return in the second-order stochastic dominance (SSD) and having maximum expected return. The authors combine re-sampling procedure and stochastic optimization to establish more flexibility in the investment decision rule.

The authors apply the re-sampling procedure to consider the sampling error in the optimization process. The authors try to resolve the problem of the stochastic optimal investment strategy choice using the nonparametric SD test by Linton et al. (2005) based on sub-sampling simulated p values. The authors apply the stochastic portfolio optimization algorithm with SSD constraints to define optimal diversified portfolios beating benchmark indices.

First, the authors find that reducing sampling error increases the dominance relationships between different portfolios, which, in turn, alters portfolio investment decisions. Though international diversification is preferred in some cases, the study’s results show that for risk-averse US investors, in general, there is no difference between the diversification strategies; this implies that there is no increase in the expected utility of international diversification for the period before and after the 2007-2008 financial crisis. Nevertheless, the authors find that stochastic diversification in domestic, global, and Europe, Australasia, and Far East markets delivers better risk returns for the US risk averters during the crisis period.

The originality of the idea in this paper is to introduce a new methodology combining the concept of portfolio re-sampling, stochastic portfolio optimization with SSD constraints, and the nonparametric SD test by Linton et al. (2005) based on subsampling simulated p values to analyze the impact of sampling errors on optimal portfolio returns and to investigate the problem of stochastic optimal choice between international and domestic diversification strategies. The authors try to prove more coherence in the portfolio choice with the stochastically and the uncertainty characters of the paper.

Since equity markets have a dynamic nature, the purpose of this paper is to investigate the performance of a revision procedure for domestic and international portfolios, and provides an empirical selection strategy for optimal diversification from an American investor's point of view. This paper considers the impact of estimation errors on the optimization processes in financial portfolios.

This paper introduces the concept of portfolio resampling using Monte Carlo method. Statistical inferences methodology is applied to construct the sample acceptance regions and confidence regions for the resampled portfolios needing revision. Tracking error variance minimization (TEVM) problem is used to define the tracking error efficient frontiers (TEEF) referring to Roll (1992). This paper employs a computation method of the periodical after revision return performance level of the dynamic diversification strategies considering the transaction cost.

The main finding is that the global portfolio diversification benefits exist for the domestic investors, in both the mean-variance and tracking error analysis. Through TEEF, the dynamic analysis indicates that domestic dynamic diversification outperforms international major and emerging diversification strategies. Portfolio revision appears to be of no systematic benefit. Depending on the revision of the weights of the assets in the portfolio and the transaction costs, the revision policy can negatively affect the performance of an investment strategy. Considering the transaction costs of portfolios revision, the results of the return performance computation suggest the dominance of the global and the international emerging markets diversification over all other strategies. Finally, an assessment between the return and the cost of the portfolios revision strategy is necessary.

The innovation of this paper is to introduce a new concept of the dynamic portfolio management by considering the transaction costs. This paper investigates the performance of a revision procedure for domestic and international portfolios and provides an empirical selection strategy for optimal diversification. The originality of the idea consists on the application of a new statistical inferences methodology to define portfolios needing revision and the use of the TEVM algorithm to define the tracking error dynamic efficient frontiers.

This chapter investigates the relative magnitude of the benefits of global diversification from the viewpoint of domestic investors in various countries by forming time-rolling efficient frontiers. To enhance feasibility of asset allocation strategies, the constraints of short-sales and over-weighting investments are taken into account. The empirical results suggest that local investors in less developed countries, particularly in Latin America, East Asia, and Southern Europe, comparatively benefit more from global diversification. Investors in the countries of civic-law origin tend to benefit more from global investment than the ones in the common-law states. Although the global market has become more integrated over the past decades, diversification benefits for domestic investors declined but did not vanish. The results of this chapter are useful for asset management professionals to determine target markets to promote the sales of international funds.

The purpose of this paper is to quantify the extent to which the Malaysia-based equity investors can benefit from diversifying their portfolio into the conventional and Islamic Southeast Asian region and the world’s top ten largest equity indices (China, Japan, Hong Kong, India, the UK, the USA, Canada, France, Germany and Switzerland).

The multivariate GARCH-dynamic conditional correlation is deployed to estimate the time-varying linkages of the selected conventional and Islamic Asian and international stock index returns with the Malaysian stock index returns, covering approximately eight years daily starting from 29 June 2007 to 30 June 2016.

In general, in terms of volatility, the results indicate that both Asian and international Islamic stock indices are more or less volatile than its conventional counterparts. From the correlation analysis, we can see that both the conventional and Islamic MSCI indices of Japan provide more diversification benefits compared to Southeast Asian region, China, Hong Kong and India. Meanwhile, in terms of international portfolio diversification, the results tend to suggest that both the conventional and Islamic MSCI indices of the USA provide more diversification benefits compared to the UK, Canada, France, Germany and Switzerland.

The findings of this paper may have several significant implications for the Malaysia-based equity investors and fund managers who seek for the understanding of return correlations between the Malaysian stock index and the world’s largest stock market indices in order to gain higher risk-adjusted returns through portfolio diversification. With regard to policy implications, the findings on market shocks and the extent of the interdependence of the Malaysian market with cross-border markets may provide some useful insights in formulating effective macroeconomic stabilization policies in the efforts of preventing contagion effect from deteriorating the domestic economy.

On the backdrop of growing importance of Shariah compliant equity markets, the purpose of this paper is to study cross-country portfolio diversification benefits for investors with major trading partners of Saudi Arabia, namely, USA, China, Japan, Germany and India, who have already invested or tend to invest in Saudi Arabian stock market.

The authors have investigated time invariant, dynamic correlations at different investments horizons of the investors among Islamic asset classes by applying relevant econometric techniques like multivariate generalized autoregressive conditional heteroscedastic –DCC and continuous wavelet transforms. For robustness, this study also applied maximal overlap discrete wavelet transform.

The findings tend to indicate that the Saudi Arabian investors have portfolio diversification benefits with all major trading partners in the short-term investment horizon. Interestingly, Saudi Arabian market has the least portfolio diversification benefits with the Chinese market. However, in the long run, all markets are correlated, yielding minimum portfolio diversification benefits and most importantly Saudi Arabian investors have portfolio diversification benefits with the Indian Islamic equity market in almost all investment horizons. The findings are highly consistent across different econometric technique estimations.

The authors are only considering five major trading partners of Saudi Arabia. Also, the authors are using S&P and FTSE shari’ah index. Moreover, the time period of the study is constrained by the availability of shari’ah indices. Econometric limitations are also well documented in the literature.

The results could be beneficial for the investors, portfolio managers, hedge fund managers and institutional investors and also could be useful for the policy makers in their policy-making decisions.

Only very few studies have looked into the benefits of international portfolio diversification from the perspective of local investors as well as the portfolio diversification benefits with the major trading partners of Saudi Arabia. One of the novelties of the method is to make the stock investors, practitioners and policy makers aware of the portfolio diversification benefits available at different time scales such as 4, 8, 16, 32, 64 and 256 trading days as investment holding periods to unveil the true dynamics of co-movement between those different assets.

The purpose of this paper is to assess the benefits to investors of international diversification among only Islamic funds. Compared to conventional investors who are not restricted in their choice of funds, Islamic investors are restricted to investing in shari’a-compliant funds, thus giving up some diversification benefits. The possibility of international diversification among only Islamic funds may thus help Islamic investors to invest in accordance to their religious beliefs and still benefit from diversification.

The paper assesses the benefits of diversification by analyzing the extent of co-integration among four regional Islamic funds and by estimating the short-term and long-term structural dynamics of and among these funds. The paper uses an Autoregressive-Distributed Lag (ARDL) approach to testing the long-run relationships among these funds and use variance decomposition and impulse response functions to examine the structural dynamics of the relationship between these funds. These methods can also be used for predictive purposes and represent, in authors opinion, a useful approach that complements the traditional methodology of static covariance matrix to find the efficient frontier at a given moment in time.

The results indicate that international diversification can help reduce risk if Asia Pacific Islamic funds and MENA region Islamic funds are invested contemporaneously and/or Asia Pacific Islamic funds and North America Islamic funds, and/or Europe funds and MENA funds. The paper also finds that investors would benefit from investing in North American funds and MENA funds both in the long run and in the short run. Conversely, the paper finds that Europe funds and North American funds are co-integrated in the long-run precluding the opportunity for substantial diversification benefits from these particular portfolio mixes.

The long-run analysis helps passive fund managers and investors in composing their portfolio by providing evidence that some portfolio mixes of different regional Islamic funds lead to better risk return performance than one regional Islamic fund portfolios. The short-run analysis however helps the active fund managers and investors as it suggests that diversifying in the short run and reviewing their portfolio on a regular basis would be beneficial as well.

This analysis justifies the promotion of Islamic finance as the negative correlation between several Islamic funds across the regions studied suggests better opportunities of investments via international diversification making Islamic funds more desirable.

Outlines previous research on international investment portfolios and presents a study of diversification and hedging on money market, bond and equity funds from UK, US and Japanese investors’ points of view. Explains the methodology, uses 1995‐1998 data to calculate returns and discusses the results. Suggests that foreign bonds and equities reduce exchange rate risk more effectively than money market instruments, although some of that risk is not diversifiable. Compares the benefits of diversification and hedging for investors in the three countries at different levels of risk and concludes that optimum asset allocation depends on the fund market characteristics, risk preferences and investor perspective.

The purpose of this paper is to examine whether there exist significant benefits from diversification into frontier markets for an Australian investor in comparison to a US investor.

The study uses the computationally efficient ADCC GARCH model to estimate time-varying correlations of returns. The authors also compare the results to DCC GARCH correlations in order to test whether the results are model-specific. Optimal portfolios with several restrictions were constructed and the results from Australian and US investors were compared. The study also uses a holding out period that is rebalanced at the end of each quarter using new portfolio weights.

The study finds that there are significant benefits for the Australian investor from diversifying into frontier markets. However, the benefits to the US investor are much higher than that of an Australian investor. The results from the holding out period also present significantly higher benefits to the US investor compared to the Australian investor.

This study examines the diversification benefits to the Australian investor from frontier markets and compares the benefits of the Australian and the US investors. The results emphasise the potential benefits from including frontier markets in the portfolio. The paper also presents a holding out period analysis.