Yau's Affine-Normal Descent for Large-Scale Unrestricted Higher-Moment Portfolio Optimization

TL;DR

This paper introduces a structure-exploiting algorithm based on Yau's affine-normal descent for large-scale unrestricted higher-moment portfolio optimization, enabling efficient computation without explicit higher-order tensors.

Contribution

The paper develops a novel algorithm that efficiently handles large-scale higher-moment portfolio optimization by exploiting problem structure and avoiding explicit tensor computations.

Findings

Effective on small benchmarks with direct configuration.

Preconditioned conjugate-gradient method excels on large asset universes.

Higher moments provide most value at moderate return targets.

Abstract

Unrestricted mean-variance-skewness-kurtosis portfolio optimization can capture asymmetry and tail risk, but sample-moment formulations become computationally impractical when the asset universe is large: they produce dense nonconvex quartic objectives with prohibitive coskewness and cokurtosis tensors and anisotropic, ill-conditioned level sets. We develop a structure-exploiting algorithm based on Yau's affine-normal descent that follows affine-normal directions of the current level set while working directly with the return matrix. The method avoids explicit higher-order tensors and exploits the quartic structure for exact sample oracles, derivative evaluation, and exact line search. We also provide theory for the reduced simplex formulation, including regularity and convexity conditions that separate data-map geometry from investor preference coefficients. Computational results show a clear implementation split: a direct configuration is effective on the standard small benchmark, whereas a preconditioned conjugate-gradient configuration with stall recovery becomes the preferred large-scale implementation by the upper end of the hundreds and remains competitive as the asset universe moves into the thousands. On a 5-minute A-share panel with 5,440 stocks, the method makes direct full-universe comparisons with exact mean-variance portfolios feasible and shows on the baseline split that the incremental value of higher moments is strongest at moderate return targets.