The structure of many real-world optimization problems includes minimization of a nonlinear (or quadratic) functional subject to bound and singly linear constraints (in the form of either equality or bilateral inequality) which are commonly called as continuous knapsack problems. Since there are efficient methods to solve large-scale bound constrained nonlinear programs, it is desirable to … Read more
Portfolio optimisation for a Fund of Hedge Funds (“FoHF”) has to address the asymmetric, non-Gaussian nature of the underlying returns distributions. Furthermore, the objective functions and constraints are not necessarily convex or even smooth. Therefore traditional portfolio optimisation methods such as mean-variance optimisation are not appropriate for such problems and global search optimisation algorithms could … Read more
Portfolio optimization problems involving Value-at-Risk (VaR) are often computationally intractable and require complete information about the return distribution of the portfolio constituents, which is rarely available in practice. These difficulties are compounded when the portfolio contains derivatives. We develop two tractable conservative approximations for the VaR of a derivative portfolio by evaluating the worst-case VaR … Read more
In the Black-Scholes-Merton model, as well as in more general stochastic models in finance, the price of an American option solves a system of partial differential variational inequalities. When these inequalities are discretized, one obtains a linear complementarity problem that must be solved at each time step. This paper presents an algorithm for the solution … Read more
This work analyzes constrained black box optimization in which the functions defining the problem are periodic with respect to some or all the variables. We show that the natural strategy of mapping trial points into the interval defined by the period in the Mesh Adaptive Direct Search (MADS) framework can be easily done in practice, … Read more
NOMAD is software that implements the MADS algorithm (Mesh Adaptive Direct Search) for black-box optimization under general nonlinear constraints. Blackbox optimization is about optimizing functions that are usually given as costly programs with no derivative information and no function values returned for a significant number of calls attempted. NOMAD is designed for such problems and … Read more
In this paper, the first approach for solving the vertex-biconnectivity augmentation problem (V2AUG) to optimality is proposed. Given a spanning subgraph of an edge-weighted graph, we search for the cheapest subset of edges to augment this subgraph in order to make it vertex-biconnected. The problem is reduced to the augmentation of the corresponding block-cut tree, … Read more
In this paper, we propose a new tractable framework for dealing with multi-stage decision problems affected by uncertainty, applicable to robust optimization and stochastic programming. We introduce a hierarchy of polynomial disturbance-feedback control policies, and show how these can be computed by solving a single semidefinite programming problem. The approach yields a hierarchy parameterized by … Read more
The p-median problem consists in locating p medians in a given graph, such that the total cost of assigning each demand to the closest median is minimized. In this work, a Lagrangean heuristic is proposed and it uses two dual information to build primal solutions. It outperforms a classic heuristic based on the same Lagrangean … Read more
The objective of this study is to construct fund-of-funds (FoF) that follow an absolute return strategy and meet the requirements imposed by the Value-at-Risk (VaR) market risk measure. We propose the VaR-Black Litterman model which accounts for the VaR and trading (diversification, buy-in threshold, liquidity, currency) requirements. The model takes the form of a probabilistic … Read more