For portfolios with a large number of assets, the single index model allows for expressing the large number of covariances between individual asset returns through a significantly smaller number of parameters. This avoids the constraint of having very large samples to estimate the mean and the covariance matrix of the asset returns, which practically would be unrealistic given the dynamic of market conditions. The traditional way to estimate the regression parameters in the single index model is the maximum likelihood method. Although the maximum likelihood estimators have desirable theoretical properties when the model is exactly satisfied, they may give completely erroneous results when outliers are present in the data set. In this paper, we define minimum pseudodistance estimators for the parameters of the single index model and using them we construct new robust optimal portfolios. We prove theoretical properties of the estimators, such as consistency, asymptotic normality, equivariance, robustness, and illustrate the benefits of the new portfolio optimization method for real financial data.
Keywords: minimum divergence methods; robustness; single index model.