William Ntambara

• We discuss the portfolio selection problem of an investor/portfolio manager in an arbitrage-free financial market where a money market account, coupon bonds and a stock are traded continuously. We allow for stochastic interest rates and in particular consider one and two-factor Vasicek models for the instantaneous short rates. In both cases we consider a complete and an incomplete market setting by adding a suitable number of bonds. The goal of an investor is to find a portfolio which maximizes expected utility from terminal wealth under budget and present expected short-fall (PESF) risk constraints. We analyze this portfolio optimization problem in both complete and incomplete financial markets in three different cases: (a) when the PESF risk is minimum, (b) when the PESF risk is between minimum and maximum and (c) without risk constraints. (a) corresponds to the portfolio insurer problem, in (b) the risk constraint is binding, i.e., it is satisfied with equality, and (c) corresponds to the unconstrained Merton investment. In all cases we find the optimal terminal wealth and portfolio process using the martingale method and Malliavin calculus respectively. In particular we solve in the incomplete market settings the dual problem explicitly. We compare the optimal terminal wealth in the cases mentioned using numerical examples. Without risk constraints, we further compare the investment strategies for complete and incomplete market numerically.