We examine the diversification benefits of using individual futures contracts instead of simply a commodity index. We determine the ex‐ante, ex‐post, and stability results for optimal Markowitz portfolios, investigate the instability between the ex‐ante and ex‐post results, and compare our results to traditional and naïve portfolios. The ex‐ante complete futures portfolio dominates the traditional and naive portfolios and the ex‐post portfolio outperforms the naïve portfolio. The instability between the ex‐ante and ex‐post results is primarily driven by the time‐varying returns of the individual assets rather than by risk. Finally, the Sharpe portfolio results are essentially identical to the Markowitz results. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Jrl Fut Mark 33:343‐368, 2013

No abstract

We consider the effect of higher moments on diversification, since most assets possess a potential for tail losses. In particular, we examine higher-moment Value-at-Risk measures for individual instruments and diversified portfolios. We find that a naïve futures portfolio is consistently superior to common stock indexes. As few as ten randomly chosen instruments diversify away 85% of the unsystematic four-moment tail risk. We also compare the two- and four-moment tail risks for different size portfolios. Finally, the tail risk for naïve portfolios varies much less over time than other portfolios. Copyright (c) 2010, The Eastern Finance Association.