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In finance, diversification is the process of allocating capital in a way that reduces the exposure to any one particular asset or risk. A common path towards diversification is to reduce
risk In simple terms, risk is the possibility of something bad happening. Risk involves uncertainty about the effects/implications of an activity with respect to something that humans value (such as health, well-being, wealth, property or the environme ...
or volatility by
investing Investment is the dedication of money to purchase of an asset to attain an increase in value over a period of time. Investment requires a sacrifice of some present asset, such as time, money, or effort. In finance, the purpose of investing i ...
in a variety of
asset In financial accountancy, financial accounting, an asset is any resource owned or controlled by a business or an economic entity. It is anything (tangible or intangible) that can be used to produce positive economic value. Assets represent value ...
s. If asset prices do not change in perfect synchrony, a diversified
portfolio Portfolio may refer to: Objects * Portfolio (briefcase), a type of briefcase Collections * Portfolio (finance), a collection of assets held by an institution or a private individual * Artist's portfolio, a sample of an artist's work or a ...
will have less variance than the
weighted average The weighted arithmetic mean is similar to an ordinary arithmetic mean (the most common type of average), except that instead of each of the data points contributing equally to the final average, some data points contribute more than others. The ...
variance of its constituent assets, and often less volatility than the least volatile of its constituents. Diversification is one of two general techniques for reducing investment risk. The other is hedging.


Examples

The simplest example of diversification is provided by the proverb "Don't put all your eggs in one basket". Dropping the basket will break all the eggs. Placing each egg in a different basket is more diversified. There is more risk of losing one egg, but less risk of losing all of them. On the other hand, having a lot of baskets may increase costs. In finance, an example of an undiversified portfolio is to hold only one stock. This is risky; it is not unusual for a single stock to go down 50% in one year. It is less common for a portfolio of 20 stocks to go down that much, especially if they are selected at random. If the stocks are selected from a variety of industries, company sizes and asset types it is even less likely to experience a 50% drop since it will mitigate any trends in that industry, company class, or asset type. Since the mid-1970s, it has also been argued that geographic diversification would generate superior risk-adjusted returns for large
institutional investor An institutional investor is an entity which pools money to purchase securities, real property, and other investment assets or originate loans. Institutional investors include commercial banks, central banks, credit unions, government-linked co ...
s by reducing overall portfolio risk while capturing some of the higher rates of return offered by the
emerging markets An emerging market (or an emerging country or an emerging economy) is a market that has some characteristics of a developed market, but does not fully meet its standards. This includes markets that may become developed markets in the future or were ...
of Asia and Latin America.


Return expectations while diversifying

If the prior expectations of the returns on all assets in the portfolio are identical, the
expected return The expected return (or expected gain) on a financial investment is the expected value of its return (of the profit on the investment). It is a measure of the center of the distribution of the random variable that is the return. It is calculated ...
on a diversified portfolio will be identical to that on an undiversified portfolio. Some assets will do better than others; but since one does not know in advance which assets will perform better, this fact cannot be exploited in advance. The return on a diversified portfolio can never exceed that of the top-performing investment, and indeed will always be lower than the highest return (unless all returns are identical). Conversely, the diversified portfolio's return will always be higher than that of the worst-performing investment. So by diversifying, one loses the chance of having invested solely in the single asset that comes out best, but one also avoids having invested solely in the asset that comes out worst. That is the role of diversification: it narrows the range of possible outcomes. Diversification need not either help or hurt expected returns, unless the alternative non-diversified portfolio has a higher expected return.


Amount of diversification

There is no magic number of stocks that is diversified versus not. Sometimes quoted is 30, although it can be as low as 10, provided they are carefully chosen. This is based on a result from John Evans and Stephen Archer. Similarly, a 1985 book reported that most value from diversification comes from the first 15 or 20 different stocks in a portfolio. More stocks give lower price volatility. Given the advantages of diversification, many experts recommend maximum diversification, also known as "buying the market portfolio". Unfortunately, identifying that portfolio is not straightforward. The earliest definition comes from the
capital asset pricing model In finance, the capital asset pricing model (CAPM) is a model used to determine a theoretically appropriate required rate of return of an asset, to make decisions about adding assets to a well-diversified portfolio. The model takes into accou ...
which argues the maximum diversification comes from buying a ''pro rata'' share of all available
asset In financial accountancy, financial accounting, an asset is any resource owned or controlled by a business or an economic entity. It is anything (tangible or intangible) that can be used to produce positive economic value. Assets represent value ...
s. This is the idea underlying
index fund An index fund (also index tracker) is a mutual fund or exchange-traded fund (ETF) designed to follow certain preset rules so that the fund can a specified basket of underlying investments.Reasonable Investor(s), Boston University Law Review, avail ...
s. Diversification has no maximum so long as more assets are available. Every equally weighted, uncorrelated asset added to a portfolio can add to that portfolio's measured diversification. When assets are not uniformly uncorrelated, a weighting approach that puts assets in proportion to their relative correlation can maximize the available diversification. "Risk parity" is an alternative idea. This weights assets in inverse proportion to risk, so the portfolio has equal risk in all asset classes. This is justified both on theoretical grounds, and with the pragmatic argument that future risk is much easier to forecast than either future market price or future economic footprint. "Correlation parity" is an extension of risk parity, and is the solution whereby each asset in a portfolio has an equal correlation with the portfolio, and is therefore the "most diversified portfolio". Risk parity is the special case of correlation parity when all pair-wise correlations are equal.


Effect of diversification on variance

One simple measure of
financial risk Financial risk is any of various types of risk associated with financing, including financial transactions that include company loans in risk of default. Often it is understood to include only downside risk, meaning the potential for financial ...
is
variance In probability theory and statistics, variance is the expectation of the squared deviation of a random variable from its population mean or sample mean. Variance is a measure of dispersion, meaning it is a measure of how far a set of numbers ...
of the
return Return may refer to: In business, economics, and finance * Return on investment (ROI), the financial gain after an expense. * Rate of return, the financial term for the profit or loss derived from an investment * Tax return, a blank document or t ...
on the portfolio. Diversification can lower the variance of a portfolio's return below what it would be if the entire portfolio were invested in the asset with the lowest variance of return, even if the assets' returns are uncorrelated. For example, let asset X have stochastic return x and asset Y have stochastic return y, with respective return variances \sigma^_x and \sigma^_y. If the fraction q of a one-unit (e.g. one-million-dollar) portfolio is placed in asset X and the fraction 1-q is placed in Y, the stochastic portfolio return is qx+(1-q)y. If x and y are uncorrelated, the variance of portfolio return is \text(qx+(1-q)y)=q^\sigma^_x+(1-q)^\sigma^_y. The variance-minimizing value of q is q=\sigma^_y/ sigma^_x+\sigma^_y/math>, which is strictly between 0 and 1. Using this value of q in the expression for the variance of portfolio return gives the latter as \sigma^_x\sigma^_y/ sigma^_x+\sigma^_y/math>, which is less than what it would be at either of the undiversified values q=1 and q=0 (which respectively give portfolio return variance of \sigma^_x and \sigma^_y). Note that the favorable effect of diversification on portfolio variance would be enhanced if x and y were negatively correlated but diminished (though not eliminated) if they were positively correlated. In general, the presence of more assets in a portfolio leads to greater diversification benefits, as can be seen by considering portfolio variance as a function of n, the number of assets. For example, if all assets' returns are mutually uncorrelated and have identical variances \sigma^_x, portfolio variance is minimized by holding all assets in the equal proportions 1/n. Then the portfolio return's variance equals \text 1/n)x_+(1/n)x_+...+(1/n)x_/math> = n(1/n^)\sigma^_ = \sigma^_/n, which is monotonically decreasing in n. The latter analysis can be adapted to show why ''adding'' uncorrelated volatile assets to a portfolio, thereby increasing the portfolio's size, is not diversification, which involves subdividing the portfolio among many smaller investments. In the case of adding investments, the portfolio's return is x_1+x_2+ \dots +x_n instead of (1/n)x_+(1/n)x_+...+(1/n)x_, and the variance of the portfolio return if the assets are uncorrelated is \text _1+x_2+\dots +x_n= \sigma^_ + \sigma^_+ \dots + \sigma^_ = n\sigma^_, which is ''increasing'' in ''n'' rather than decreasing. Thus, for example, when an insurance company adds more and more uncorrelated policies to its portfolio, this expansion does not itself represent diversification—the diversification occurs in the spreading of the insurance company's risks over a large number of part-owners of the company.


Diversification with correlated returns via an equally weighted portfolio

The expected return on a portfolio is a weighted average of the expected returns on each individual asset: : \mathbb _P= \sum^_x_i\mathbb _i where x_i is the proportion of the investor's total invested wealth in asset i . The variance of the portfolio return is given by: : \underbrace_ = \mathbb _P - \mathbb[R_P^2 . Inserting in the expression for \mathbb _P: : \sigma^_ = \mathbb\left[\sum^_x_i R_i - \sum^_x_i\mathbb[R_i]\right]^2 . Rearranging: : \sigma^_ = \mathbb\left[\sum^_x_i(R_i - \mathbb[R_i])\right]^2 : \sigma^_ = \mathbb\left[\sum^_ \sum^_ x_i x_j(R_i - \mathbb[R_i])(R_j - \mathbb _j\right] :\sigma_^=\mathbb\left sum_^x_^(R_-\mathbb[R_^+\sum_^\sum_^x_x_(R_-\mathbb[R_.html" ;"title="_.html" ;"title="sum_^x_^(R_-\mathbb[R_">sum_^x_^(R_-\mathbb[R_^+\sum_^\sum_^x_x_(R_-\mathbb[R_">_.html" ;"title="sum_^x_^(R_-\mathbb[R_">sum_^x_^(R_-\mathbb[R_^+\sum_^\sum_^x_x_(R_-\mathbb[R_(R_-\mathbb[R_])\right] : \sigma_^=\sum_^x_^\underbrace_+\sum_^\sum_^x_x_\underbrace_ : \sigma^_ = \sum^_ x^_ \sigma^_ + \sum^_ \sum^_ x_i x_j \sigma_ where \sigma^_ is the variance on asset i and \sigma_ is the covariance between assets i and j . In an equally weighted portfolio, x_i = x_j = \frac , \forall i, j . The portfolio variance then becomes: : \sigma^2_P = \frac \ \bar^_ + n(n-1) \frac \frac \bar_ where \bar_ is the average of the covariances \sigma_ for i\neq j and \bar^2_i is the average of the variances. Simplifying, we obtain : \sigma^_ = \frac \bar^_ + \frac \bar_ . As the number of assets grows we get the asymptotic formula: : \lim_ \sigma^2_P = \bar_. Thus, in an equally weighted portfolio, the portfolio variance tends to the average of covariances between securities as the number of securities becomes arbitrarily large.


Diversifiable and non-diversifiable risk

The
capital asset pricing model In finance, the capital asset pricing model (CAPM) is a model used to determine a theoretically appropriate required rate of return of an asset, to make decisions about adding assets to a well-diversified portfolio. The model takes into accou ...
introduced the concepts of diversifiable and non-diversifiable risk. Synonyms for diversifiable risk are idiosyncratic risk, unsystematic risk, and security-specific risk. Synonyms for non-diversifiable risk are
systematic risk In finance and economics, systematic risk (in economics often called aggregate risk or undiversifiable risk) is vulnerability to events which affect aggregate outcomes such as broad market returns, total economy-wide resource holdings, or aggrega ...
,
beta Beta (, ; uppercase , lowercase , or cursive ; grc, βῆτα, bē̂ta or ell, βήτα, víta) is the second letter of the Greek alphabet. In the system of Greek numerals, it has a value of 2. In Modern Greek, it represents the voiced labiod ...
risk and
market risk Market risk is the risk of losses in positions arising from movements in market variables like prices and volatility. There is no unique classification as each classification may refer to different aspects of market risk. Nevertheless, the most ...
. If one buys all the stocks in the
S&P 500 The Standard and Poor's 500, or simply the S&P 500, is a stock market index tracking the stock performance of 500 large companies listed on stock exchanges in the United States. It is one of the most commonly followed equity indices. As of D ...
one is obviously exposed only to movements in that
index Index (or its plural form indices) may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Fictional entities * Index (''A Certain Magical Index''), a character in the light novel series ''A Certain Magical Index'' * The Index, an item on a Halo megastru ...
. If one buys a single stock in the S&P 500, one is exposed both to index movements and movements in the stock based on its underlying company. The first risk is called "non-diversifiable", because it exists however many S&P 500 stocks are bought. The second risk is called "diversifiable", because it can be reduced by diversifying among stocks. In the presence of per-asset investment fees, there is also the possibility of overdiversifying to the point that the portfolio's performance will suffer because the fees outweigh the gains from diversification. The capital asset pricing model argues that investors should only be compensated for non-diversifiable risk. Other financial models allow for multiple sources of non-diversifiable risk, but also insist that diversifiable risk should not carry any extra expected return. Still other models do not accept this contention.


An empirical example relating diversification to risk reduction

In 1977 Edwin Elton and Martin Gruber worked out an empirical example of the gains from diversification. Their approach was to consider a population of 3,290 securities available for possible inclusion in a portfolio, and to consider the average risk over all possible randomly chosen ''n''-asset portfolios with equal amounts held in each included asset, for various values of ''n''. Their results are summarized in the following table. The result for ''n''=30 is close to ''n''=1,000, and even four stocks provide most of the reduction in risk compared with one stock.


Corporate diversification strategies

In corporate portfolio models, diversification is thought of as being vertical or horizontal. Horizontal diversification is thought of as expanding a product line or acquiring related companies. Vertical diversification is synonymous with integrating the supply chain or amalgamating distributions channels. Non-incremental diversification is a strategy followed by conglomerates, where the individual business lines have little to do with one another, yet the company is attaining diversification from exogenous risk factors to stabilize and provide opportunity for active management of diverse resources.


Fallacy of time diversification

The argument is often made that time reduces variance in a portfolio: a "time diversification". A common belief is younger investors should avoid bonds and emphasize stocks, due to the belief investors will have time to recover from any downturns. Yet this belief has flaws, as John Norstad explains: A paper by Vanguard Investment Counseling & Research explores the collected research on this topic further, in general supporting Norstad's conclusion, but allowing for the counteracted effects of inflation risk and human capital:


History

Diversification is mentioned in the
Bible The Bible (from Koine Greek , , 'the books') is a collection of religious texts or scriptures that are held to be sacred in Christianity, Judaism, Samaritanism, and many other religions. The Bible is an anthologya compilation of texts of a ...
, in the book of
Ecclesiastes Ecclesiastes (; hbo, קֹהֶלֶת, Qōheleṯ, grc, Ἐκκλησιαστής, Ekklēsiastēs) is one of the Ketuvim ("Writings") of the Hebrew Bible and part of the Wisdom literature of the Christian Old Testament. The title commonly use ...
which was written in approximately 935 B.C.: :But divide your investments among many places, :for you do not know what risks might lie ahead. Diversification is also mentioned in the
Talmud The Talmud (; he, , Talmūḏ) is the central text of Rabbinic Judaism and the primary source of Jewish religious law (''halakha'') and Jewish theology. Until the advent of modernity, in nearly all Jewish communities, the Talmud was the cente ...
. The formula given there is to split one's assets into thirds: one third in business (buying and selling things), one third kept liquid (e.g. gold coins), and one third in land (
real estate Real estate is property consisting of land and the buildings on it, along with its natural resources such as crops, minerals or water; immovable property of this nature; an interest vested in this (also) an item of real property, (more general ...
). This strategy of splitting wealth equally among available options is now known as "naive diversification", "Talmudic diversification" or "1/n diversification", a concept which has earned renewed attention since the year 2000 due to research showing it may offer advantages in some scenarios. Diversification is mentioned in Shakespeare's ''
Merchant of Venice ''The Merchant of Venice'' is a play by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written between 1596 and 1598. A merchant in Venice named Antonio defaults on a large loan provided by a Jewish moneylender, Shylock. Although classified as a ...
'' (ca. 1599): :My ventures are not in one bottom trusted, :Nor to one place; nor is my whole estate :Upon the fortune of this present year: :Therefore, my merchandise makes me not sad. Modern understanding of diversification dates back to the influential work of economist
Harry Markowitz Harry Max Markowitz (born August 24, 1927) is an American economist who received the 1989 John von Neumann Theory Prize and the 1990 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. Markowitz is a professor of finance at the Rady School of Management ...
in the 1950s, whose work pioneered
modern portfolio theory Modern portfolio theory (MPT), or mean-variance analysis, is a mathematical framework for assembling a portfolio of assets such that the expected return is maximized for a given level of risk. It is a formalization and extension of diversificatio ...
(see
Markowitz model In finance, the Markowitz model ─ put forward by Harry Markowitz in 1952 ─ is a portfolio optimization model; it assists in the selection of the most efficient portfolio by analyzing various possible portfolios of the given securities. Here ...
). An earlier precedent for diversification was economist
John Maynard Keynes John Maynard Keynes, 1st Baron Keynes, ( ; 5 June 1883 – 21 April 1946), was an English economist whose ideas fundamentally changed the theory and practice of macroeconomics and the economic policies of governments. Originally trained in ...
, who managed the endowment of
King's College, Cambridge King's College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. Formally The King's College of Our Lady and Saint Nicholas in Cambridge, the college lies beside the River Cam and faces out onto King's Parade in the centre of the city ...
from the 1920s to his 1946 death with a stock-selection strategy similar to what was later called
value investing Value investing is an investment paradigm that involves buying securities that appear underpriced by some form of fundamental analysis. The various forms of value investing derive from the investment philosophy first taught by Benjamin Graham ...
. While diversification in the modern sense was "not easily available in Keynes's day" and Keynes typically held a small number of assets compared to later investment theories, he nonetheless is recognized as a pioneer of financial diversification. Keynes came to recognize the importance, "if possible", he wrote, of holding assets with "opposed risks ..since they are likely to move in opposite directions when there are general fluctuations" Keynes was a pioneer of "international diversification" due to substantial holdings in non-U.K. stocks, up to 75%, and avoiding home bias at a time when university endowments in the U.S. and U.K. were invested almost entirely in domestic assets.David Chambers, Elroy Dimson, Justin Foo (2015)
Keynes, King's, and Endowment Asset Management
in ''How the Financial Crisis and Great Recession Affected Higher Education'' (2015), Jeffrey R. Brown and Caroline M. Hoxby, editors (p. 127 - 150). Conference held September 27-28, 2012.


See also

*
Central limit theorem In probability theory, the central limit theorem (CLT) establishes that, in many situations, when independent random variables are summed up, their properly normalized sum tends toward a normal distribution even if the original variables themselv ...
*
Coherent risk measure In the fields of actuarial science and financial economics there are a number of ways that risk can be defined; to clarify the concept theoreticians have described a number of properties that a risk measure might or might not have. A coherent risk ...
*
Dollar cost averaging Dollar cost averaging (DCA) is an investment strategy that aims to apply value investing principles to regular investment. The term was first coined by Benjamin Graham in his book ''The Intelligent Investor''. Graham writes that dollar cost averag ...
*
Equity repositioning Equity Repositioning is the financial strategy of taking an equity rich asset base and repositioning those assets into a diversity of investment vehicles. The idea is to borrow against the equity value of a property and reposition that capital. Th ...
*
Financial correlation Financial correlations measure the relationship between the changes of two or more financial variables over time. For example, the prices of equity stocks and fixed interest bonds often move in opposite directions: when investors sell stocks, t ...
*
List of finance topics The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to finance: Finance – addresses the ways in which individuals and organizations raise and allocate monetary resources over time, taking into account the risks entailed in ...
*
Modern portfolio theory Modern portfolio theory (MPT), or mean-variance analysis, is a mathematical framework for assembling a portfolio of assets such that the expected return is maximized for a given level of risk. It is a formalization and extension of diversificatio ...
*
Systematic risk In finance and economics, systematic risk (in economics often called aggregate risk or undiversifiable risk) is vulnerability to events which affect aggregate outcomes such as broad market returns, total economy-wide resource holdings, or aggrega ...


References


External links


Macro-Investment Analysis
Prof.
William F. Sharpe William Forsyth Sharpe (born June 16, 1934) is an American economist. He is the STANCO 25 Professor of Finance, Emeritus at Stanford University's Graduate School of Business, and the winner of the 1990 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. ...
,
Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...

An Introduction to Investment Theory
Prof. William N. Goetzmann,
Yale School of Management The Yale School of Management (also known as Yale SOM) is the graduate business school of Yale University, a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. The school awards the Master of Business Administration (MBA), MBA for Executives ...
{{DEFAULTSORT:Diversification (Finance) Financial risk modeling