The impact of proportional transaction costs on systematically generated portfolios

Abstract

The effect of proportional transaction costs on systematically generated portfolios is studied empirically. The performance of several portfolios (the index tracking portfolio, the equally-weighted portfolio, the entropy-weighted portfolio, and the diversity-weighted portfolio) in the presence of dividends and transaction costs is examined under different configurations involving the trading frequency, constituent list size, and renewing frequency. Moreover, a method to smooth transaction costs is proposed.

25 pages, 17 figures