Sparse Index Tracking Based On $L_{1/2}$ Model And Algorithm

Abstract: Recently, $L_1$ regularization have been attracted extensive attention and successfully applied in mean-variance portfolio selection for promoting out-of-sample properties and decreasing transaction costs. However, $L_1$ regularization approach is ineffective in promoting sparsity and selecting regularization parameter on index tracking with the budget and no-short selling constraints, since the 1-norm of the asset weights will have a constant value of one. Our recent research on $L_{1/2}$ regularization has found that the half thresholding algorithm with optimal regularization parameter setting strategy is the fast solver of $L_{1/2}$ regularization, which can provide the more sparse solution. In this paper we apply $L_{1/2}$ regularization method to stock index tracking and establish a new sparse index tracking model. A hybrid half thresholding algorithm is proposed for solving the model. Empirical tests of model and algorithm are carried out on the eight data sets from OR-library. The optimal tracking portfolio obtained from the new model and algorithm has lower out-of-sample prediction error and consistency both in-sample and out-of-sample. Moreover, since the automatic regularization parameters are selected for the fixed number of optimal portfolio, our algorithm is a fast solver, especially for the large scale problem.