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Black-Litterman and ESG Portfolio Optimization

Published: November 26, 2025 | arXiv ID: 2511.21850v1

By: Aviv Alpern, Svetlozar Rachev

Potential Business Impact:

Makes investing money grow much faster.

Business Areas:
Social Entrepreneurship Community and Lifestyle

We introduce a simple portfolio optimization strategy using ESG data with the Black-Litterman allocation framework. ESG scores are used as a bias for Stein shrinkage estimation of equilibrium risk premiums used in assigning Black-Litterman asset weights. Assets are modeled as multivariate affine normal-inverse Gaussian variables using CVaR as a risk measure. This strategy, though very simple, when employed with a soft turnover constraint is exceptionally successful. Portfolios are reallocated daily over a 4.7 year period, each with a different set of hyperparameters used for optimization. The most successful strategies have returns of approximately 40-45% annually.

Country of Origin
🇺🇸 United States

Page Count
24 pages

Category
Quantitative Finance:
Portfolio Management