THE SHARPE RATIO EFFICIENT FRONTIER David H. Bailey Complex Systems Group Leader - Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
[email protected] Marcos M. López de Prado Head of Global Quantitative Research - Tudor Investment Corp. and Research Affiliate - Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
[email protected] First version: May 2008 This version: July 2012 Forthcoming, Journal of Risk http://www.risk.net/type/journal/source/journal-of-risk ________________________________ We thank the editor of the Journal of Risk and two anonymous referees for helpful comments. We are grateful to Tudor Investment Corporation, José Blanco (UBS), Sid Browne (Guggenheim Partners), Peter Carr (Morgan Stanley, NYU), David Easley (Cornell University), Steve Evans (Tudor Investment Corp.), Laurent Favre (Alternative Soft), Matthew Foreman (University of California, Irvine), Ross Garon (S.A.C. Capital Advisors), Robert Jarrow (Cornell University), David Leinweber (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory), Elmar Mertens (Federal Reserve Board), Attilio Meucci (Kepos Capital, NYU), Maureen O’Hara (Cornell University), Eva del Pozo (Complutense University), Riccardo Rebonato (PIMCO, University of Oxford) and Luis Viceira (HBS). Supported in part by the Director, Office of Computational and Technology Research, Division of Mathematical, Information, and Computational Sciences of the U.S. Department of Energy, under contract number DE-AC02- 05CH11231. Electronic copy available at: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1821643 THE SHARPE RATIO EFFICIENT FRONTIER ABSTRACT We evaluate the probability that an estimated Sharpe ratio exceeds a given threshold in presence of non-Normal returns. We show that this new uncertainty-adjusted investment skill metric (called Probabilistic Sharpe ratio, or PSR) has a number of important applications: First, it allows us to establish the track record length needed for rejecting the hypothesis that a measured Sharpe ratio is below a certain threshold with a given confidence level.