Modeling Skewness in Portfolio Choice

Abstract

We investigate how to best model skewness for portfolio choice decisions. To this end, we compare the predictive ability and portfolio performance of several prominent skewness models in a sample of ten international equity market indices. Overall, models that employ information from the option markets outperform models that only rely on stock returns. We propose an option-based skewness estimator that accounts for the skewness risk premium. This estimator offers the most informative forecasts of future skewness, the lowest prediction errors and the best portfolio performance in most of our tests.

Keywords: Skewness modeling, Skewness Risk Premium, Portfolio choice

JEL Classification: G11, C58