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Imre Kondor

Publications and source records attributed to Imre Kondor.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources
arXiv2025

Energy landscapes of small SK spin glasses

We study the $\pm J$ SK model for small $N$'s up to $N=9$. We sort the $2^{N(N-1)/2}$ possible realizations of the coupling matrix into equivalence classes according to the gauge symmetry and permutation symmetry and determine the energy spectra for each of these classes. We also study the energy landscape in these small systems and find that the elements of the hierarchic organization of ground states %and higher energy local minima start to appear in some samples already for $N$'s as small as 6.

cond-mat.dis-nn↗
arXiv2022

Field theory for the Almeida-Thouless transition

This work contains a review of the theoretical understanding for the Almeida-Thouless transition. The effective field theoretic model for this transition to the replica symmetry broken phase is extended to low temperatures, making it possible to compute perturbative corrections to the mean field phase boundary even close to zero temperature. Nonperturbative behavior emerges both around the zero-external-field transition and at low temperature. Renormalization group results are also discussed.

cond-mat.dis-nn↗
arXiv2021

Aspects of a phase transition in high-dimensional random geometry

A phase transition in high-dimensional random geometry is analyzed as it arises in a variety of problems. A prominent example is the feasibility of a minimax problem that represents the extremal case of a class of financial risk measures, among them the current regulatory market risk measure Expected Shortfall. Others include portfolio optimization with a ban on short selling, the storage capacity of the perceptron, the solvability of a set of linear equations with random coefficients, and competition for resources in an ecological system. These examples shed light on various aspects of the underlying geometric phase transition, create links between problems belonging to seemingly distant fields and offer the possibility for further ramifications.

cond-mat.stat-mech↗
arXiv2021

Optimizing Expected Shortfall under an $\ell_1$ constraint -- an analytic approach

Expected Shortfall (ES), the average loss above a high quantile, is the current financial regulatory market risk measure. Its estimation and optimization are highly unstable against sample fluctuations and become impossible above a critical ratio $r=N/T$, where $N$ is the number of different assets in the portfolio, and $T$ is the length of the available time series. The critical ratio depends on the confidence level $α$, which means we have a line of critical points on the $α-r$ plane. The large fluctuations in the estimation of ES can be attenuated by the application of regularizers. In this paper, we calculate ES analytically under an $\ell_1$ regularizer by the method of replicas borrowed from the statistical physics of random systems. The ban on short selling, i.e. a constraint rendering all the portfolio weights non-negative, is a special case of an asymmetric $\ell_1$ regularizer. Results are presented for the out-of-sample and the in-sample estimator of the regularized ES, the estimation error, the distribution of the optimal portfolio weights and the density of the assets eliminated from the portfolio by the regularizer. It is shown that the no-short constraint acts as a high volatility cutoff, in the sense that it sets the weights of the high volatility elements to zero with higher probability than those of the low volatility items. This cutoff renormalizes the aspect ratio $r=N/T$, thereby extending the range of the feasibility of optimization. We find that there is a nontrivial mapping between the regularized and unregularized problems, corresponding to a renormalization of the order parameters.

q-fin.PM↗
arXiv2020

The effect of social balance on social fragmentation

With the availability of cell phones, internet, social media etc. the interconnectedness of people within most societies has increased drastically over the past three decades. Across the same timespan, we are observing the phenomenon of increasing levels of fragmentation in society into relatively small and isolated groups that have been termed filter bubbles, or echo chambers. These pose a number of threats to open societies, in particular, a radicalisation in political, social or cultural issues, and a limited access to facts. In this paper we show that these two phenomena might be tightly related. We study a simple stochastic co-evolutionary model of a society of interacting people. People are not only able to update their opinions within their social context, but can also update their social links from collaborative to hostile, and vice versa. The latter is implemented such that social balance is realised. We find that there exists a critical level of interconnectedness, above which society fragments into small sub-communities that are positively linked within and hostile towards other groups. We argue that the existence of a critical communication density is a universal phenomenon in all societies that exhibit social balance. The necessity arises from the underlying mathematical structure of a phase transition phenomenon that is known from the theory of a kind of disordered magnets called spin glasses. We discuss the consequences of this phase transition for social fragmentation in society.

physics.soc-ph↗
arXiv2018

Analytic approach to variance optimization under an $\ell_1$ constraint

The optimization of the variance supplemented by a budget constraint and an asymmetric $\ell_1$ regularizer is carried out analytically by the replica method borrowed from the theory of disordered systems. The asymmetric regularizer allows us to penalize short and long positions differently, so the present treatment includes the no-short-constrained portfolio optimization problem as a special case. Results are presented for the out-of-sample and the in-sample estimator of the regularized variance, the relative estimation error, the density of the assets eliminated from the portfolio by the regularizer, and the distribution of the optimal portfolio weights. We have studied the dependence of these quantities on the ratio $r$ of the portfolio's dimension $N$ to the sample size $T$, and on the strength of the regularizer. We have checked the analytic results by numerical simulations, and found general agreement. Regularization extends the interval where the optimization can be carried out, and suppresses the large sample fluctuations, but the performance of $\ell_1$ regularization is rather disappointing: if the sample size is large relative to the dimension, i.e. $r$ is small, the regularizer does not play any role, while for $r$'s where the regularizer starts to be felt the estimation error is already so large as to make the whole optimization exercise pointless. We find that the $\ell_1$ regularization can eliminate at most half the assets from the portfolio, corresponding to this there is a critical ratio $r=2$ beyond which the $\ell_1$ regularized variance cannot be optimized: the regularized variance becomes constant over the simplex. These facts do not seem to have been noticed in the literature.

q-fin.PM↗
arXiv2018

Bias-variance trade-off in portfolio optimization under Expected Shortfall with $\ell_2$ regularization

The optimization of a large random portfolio under the Expected Shortfall risk measure with an $\ell_2$ regularizer is carried out by analytical calculation. The regularizer reins in the large sample fluctuations and the concomitant divergent estimation error, and eliminates the phase transition where this error would otherwise blow up. In the data-dominated region, where the number $N$ of different assets in the portfolio is much less than the length $T$ of the available time series, the regularizer plays a negligible role even if its strength $η$ is large, while in the opposite limit, where the size of samples is comparable to, or even smaller than the number of assets, the optimum is almost entirely determined by the regularizer. We construct the contour map of estimation error on the $N/T$ vs. $η$ plane and find that for a given value of the estimation error the gain in $N/T$ due to the regularizer can reach a factor of about 4 for a sufficiently strong regularizer.

q-fin.PM↗
arXiv2017

Analytic solution to variance optimization with no short-selling

A large portfolio of independent returns is optimized under the variance risk measure with a ban on short positions. The no-short selling constraint acts as an asymmetric $\ell_1$ regularizer, setting some of the portfolio weights to zero and keeping the out of sample estimator for the variance bounded, avoiding the divergence present in the non-regularized case. However, the susceptibility, i.e. the sensitivity of the optimal portfolio weights to changes in the returns, diverges at a critical value $r=2$. This means that a ban on short positions does not prevent the phase transition in the optimization problem, it merely shifts the critical point from its non-regularized value of $r=1$ to $2$. At $r=2$ the out of sample estimator for the portfolio variance stays finite and the estimated in-sample variance vanishes. We have performed numerical simulations to support the analytic results and found perfect agreement for $N/T<2$. Numerical experiments on finite size samples of symmetrically distributed returns show that above this critical point the probability of finding solutions with zero in-sample variance increases rapidly with increasing $N$, becoming one in the large $N$ limit. However, these are not legitimate solutions of the optimization problem, as they are infinitely sensitive to any change in the input parameters, in particular they will wildly fluctuate from sample to sample. We also calculate the distribution of the optimal weights over the random samples and show that the regularizer preferentially removes the assets with large variances, in accord with one's natural expectation.

q-fin.PM↗
arXiv2016

The missing assets and the size of Shadow Banking: an update

In a recent paper, using data from Forbes Global 2000, we have observed that the upper tail of the firm size distribution (by assets) falls off much faster than a Pareto distribution. The missing mass was suggested as an indicator of the size of the Shadow Banking (SB) sector. This short note provides the latest figures of the missing assets for 2013, 2014 and 2015. In 2013 and 2014 the dynamics of the missing assets continued being strongly correlated with estimates of the size of the SB sector of the Financial Stability Board. In 2015 we find a sharp decrease in the size of missing assets, suggesting that the SB sector is deflating.

econ.GN↗
arXiv2016

Replica approach to mean-variance portfolio optimization

We consider the problem of mean-variance portfolio optimization for a generic covariance matrix subject to the budget constraint and the constraint for the expected return, with the application of the replica method borrowed from the statistical physics of disordered systems. We find that the replica symmetry of the solution does not need to be assumed, but emerges as the unique solution of the optimization problem. We also check the stability of this solution and find that the eigenvalues of the Hessian are positive for $r=N/T<1$, where $N$ is the dimension of the portfolio and $T$ the length of the time series used to estimate the covariance matrix. At the critical point $r=1$ a phase transition is taking place. The out of sample estimation error blows up at this point as $1/(1-r)$, independently of the covariance matrix or the expected return, displaying the universality not only of the critical index, but also the critical point. As a conspicuous illustration of the dangers of in-sample estimates, the optimal in-sample variance is found to vanish at the critical point inversely proportional to the divergent estimation error.

q-fin.PM↗
arXiv2015

Portfolio Optimization under Expected Shortfall: Contour Maps of Estimation Error

The contour maps of the error of historical resp. parametric estimates for large random portfolios optimized under the risk measure Expected Shortfall (ES) are constructed. Similar maps for the sensitivity of the portfolio weights to small changes in the returns as well as the VaR of the ES-optimized portfolio are also presented, along with results for the distribution of portfolio weights over the random samples and for the out-of-sample and in-the-sample estimates for ES. The contour maps allow one to quantitatively determine the sample size (the length of the time series) required by the optimization for a given number of different assets in the portfolio, at a given confidence level and a given level of relative estimation error. The necessary sample sizes invariably turn out to be unrealistically large for any reasonable choice of the number of assets and the confidence level. These results are obtained via analytical calculations based on methods borrowed from the statistical physics of random systems, supported by numerical simulations.

q-fin.RM↗
arXiv2015

Contour map of estimation error for Expected Shortfall

The contour map of estimation error of Expected Shortfall (ES) is constructed. It allows one to quantitatively determine the sample size (the length of the time series) required by the optimization under ES of large institutional portfolios for a given size of the portfolio, at a given confidence level and a given estimation error.

q-fin.RM↗
arXiv2014

$L_p$ regularized portfolio optimization

Investors who optimize their portfolios under any of the coherent risk measures are naturally led to regularized portfolio optimization when they take into account the impact their trades make on the market. We show here that the impact function determines which regularizer is used. We also show that any regularizer based on the norm $L_p$ with $p>1$ makes the sensitivity of coherent risk measures to estimation error disappear, while regularizers with $p<1$ do not. The $L_1$ norm represents a border case: its "soft" implementation does not remove the instability, but rather shifts its locus, whereas its "hard" implementation (equivalent to a ban on short selling) eliminates it. We demonstrate these effects on the important special case of Expected Shortfall (ES) that is on its way to becoming the next global regulatory market risk measure.

q-fin.PM↗
arXiv2014

The Interrupted Power Law and The Size of Shadow Banking

Using public data (Forbes Global 2000) we show that the asset sizes for the largest global firms follow a Pareto distribution in an intermediate range, that is ``interrupted'' by a sharp cut-off in its upper tail, where it is totally dominated by financial firms. This flattening of the distribution contrasts with a large body of empirical literature which finds a Pareto distribution for firm sizes both across countries and over time. Pareto distributions are generally traced back to a mechanism of proportional random growth, based on a regime of constant returns to scale. This makes our findings of an ``interrupted'' Pareto distribution all the more puzzling, because we provide evidence that financial firms in our sample should operate in such a regime. We claim that the missing mass from the upper tail of the asset size distribution is a consequence of shadow banking activity and that it provides an (upper) estimate of the size of the shadow banking system. This estimate -- which we propose as a shadow banking index -- compares well with estimates of the Financial Stability Board until 2009, but it shows a sharper rise in shadow banking activity after 2010. Finally, we propose a proportional random growth model that reproduces the observed distribution, thereby providing a quantitative estimate of the intensity of shadow banking activity.

q-fin.GN↗
arXiv2014

Strong random correlations in networks of heterogeneous agents

Correlations and other collective phenomena in a schematic model of heterogeneous binary agents (individual spin-glass samples) are considered on the complete graph and also on 2d and 3d regular lattices. The system's stochastic dynamics is studied by numerical simulations. The dynamics is so slow that one can meaningfully speak of quasi-equilibrium states. Performing measurements of correlations in such a quasi-equilibrium state we find that they are random both as to their sign and absolute value, but on average they fall off very slowly with distance in all instances that we have studied. This means that the system is essentially non-local, small changes at one end may have a strong impact at the other. Correlations and other local quantities are extremely sensitive to the boundary conditions all across the system, although this sensitivity disappears upon averaging over the samples or partially averaging over the agents. The strong, random correlations tend to organize a large fraction of the agents into strongly correlated clusters that act together. If we think about this model as a distant metaphor of economic agents or bank networks, the systemic risk implications of this tendency are clear: any impact on even a single strongly correlated agent will spread, in an unforeseeable manner, to the whole system via the strong random correlations.

cond-mat.dis-nn↗
arXiv2011

Optimal Liquidation Strategies Regularize Portfolio Selection

We consider the problem of portfolio optimization in the presence of market impact, and derive optimal liquidation strategies. We discuss in detail the problem of finding the optimal portfolio under Expected Shortfall (ES) in the case of linear market impact. We show that, once market impact is taken into account, a regularized version of the usual optimization problem naturally emerges. We characterize the typical behavior of the optimal liquidation strategies, in the limit of large portfolio sizes, and show how the market impact removes the instability of ES in this context.

q-fin.PM↗
arXiv2010

Large random correlations in individual mean field spin glass samples

We argue that complex systems must possess long range correlations and illustrate this idea on the example of the mean field spin glass model. Defined on the complete graph, this model has no genuine concept of distance, but the long range character of correlations is translated into a broad distribution of the spin-spin correlation coefficients for almost all realizations of the random couplings. When we sample the whole phase space we find that this distribution is so broad indeed that at low temperatures it essentially becomes uniform, with all possible correlation values appearing with the same probability. The distribution of correlations inside a single phase space valley is also studied and found to be much narrower.

cond-mat.dis-nn↗