Abstract

We analyze the consumption-portfolio selection problem of an investor facing both Brownian and jump risks. By adopting a factor structure for the asset returns and decomposing the two types of risks on a well chosen basis, we provide a new methodology for determining the optimal solution up to an implicitly defined constant, which in some cases can be reduced to a fully explicit closed form, irrespectively of the number of assets available to the investor. We show that the optimal policy is for the investor to focus on controlling his exposure to the jump risk, while exploiting differences in the asset returns diffusive characteristics in the orthogonal space. We also examine the solution to the portfolio problem as the number of assets increases and the impact of the jumps on the diversification of the optimal portfolio.