Constructing an efficient portfolio

At the beginning of the chapter, we briefly covered the formulas to calculate the estimated return and variance of a portfolio. We will now dive into implementations of those calculations along with selecting portfolios that are on the efficient frontier.

To do this, we will need to cover the following concepts:

  • Gathering of historical returns on the assets in the portfolio
  • Formulation of portfolio risk based on historical returns
  • Determining the Sharpe ratio for a portfolio
  • Selecting optimal portfolios based upon Sharpe ratios

Gathering historical returns for a portfolio

In our examples, we will use data retrieved from Yahoo! Finance to create historical returns for the stocks in the portfolio. The calculations we ...

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