This paper analyses the portfolio problem of an investor who wants to maximize the expected exponential utility of his terminal wealth both in a complete and an incomplete financial market. The investor must cope with a set of stochastic investment opportunities and two sets of background risks. If the market is complete we are able to find an exact solution. Instead, if the market is incomplete, we suggest an approximated general solution. Contrary to other exact solutions obtained in the literature, all our results are obtained without specifying any particular functional form for the stochastic variables involved in the problem.JEL classification: G11, C61.