Previous studies have shown that cryptocurrencies could hedge equities. However, most of those studies did not take into account the recent cryptocurrencies bubbles in 2018 and domestic currencies. Therefore, this research aimed to study whether the hedge effectiveness of cryptocurrencies still exists. This research used five cryptocurrencies (bitcoin, ethereum, monero, ripple, and litecoin), equity indices (Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam, Thailand, and the Philippines), and iShares ETF MSCI World (developed world). Commodities-based hedging using iShares S&P GSCI Commodity-Indexed Trust was also analyzed as a comparison. The asymmetric generalized dynamic conditional correlation (AG-DCC) GARCH showed that one cryptocurrency could not significantly and consistently hedge equities while five equally weighted cryptocurrencies could marginally hedge equities. Meanwhile, the classical minimum variance model also showed that the hedge effectiveness of cryptocurrencies was insignificantly positive. Equity traders could add cryptocurrencies into portfolios when the purpose was to maximize the Sharpe ratio instead of hedging. Overall, commodities were the better hedge for Southeast Asia emerging markets.

The previous studies have shown that capital market integration has increased in the ASEAN-5, implying that investors making investment diversification across ASEAN capital markets could only earn limited diversification advantages. To diversify their portfolios, equity investors must find other assets. The main focus of this research is to analyze the effectiveness of put replication, gold, and oil on hedge equities in the ASEAN-5 (Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, and the Philippines). Protective put strategy, DCC-GARCH, and Markowitz optimization are used to measure hedge effectiveness, risk-adjusted-performance such as Sharpe ratio, drawdown, and Omega ratio. The result reveals that gold is a cheaper hedge than oil and oil-hedged strategy is more expensive in ASEAN-5 compared to oil exporting nations. Also, investors with big exposure to the oil-related portfolio should diversify to Philippine equity. From hedging effectiveness and risk-adjusted-performance perspectives, oil is less attractive than money market instruments and gold. This study also implies that risk-averse investors should prefer to put replication or guaranteed financial products compared to commodities-hedged strategy.

This research investigated the performance of a dynamic portfolio that consists of sustainable/ethical stocks and gold. The main purpose of this study is to prove that the inclusion of gold in sustainable/ethical stocks portfolios could produce better performance. Therefore, the method used in this research, DCC-GARCH, was relaxing the basic assumptions in the theory of modern portfolio that is under the assumption of the normality of stock return and securities would have constant correlation. This research used data such as SRI-KEHATI Index (SKI) and Jakarta Islamic Index (JII) in Indonesia as a proxy for sustainable investments. Additionally, this research used gold from 2013 to 2019. This study is able to provide evidence regarding the ability of a dynamic portfolio to minimize the level of portfolio risk. However, this led a lower rate of return. Based on the OLS regression, gold is also proven as a weak safe haven for sustainable investment in Indonesia. Investors who believe in ethical investment may include gold in this time-varying approach when formulating the portfolio to reduce risk significantly. The inclusion of gold in portfolios could produce hedging effectiveness. Overall, this study supports some previous findings regarding the ability of gold as an instrument, which could reduce investment risk if involved in a portfolio.

Purpose — This study aims to examine Islamic cryptocurrencies and their dependency on foreign exchange markets in vine copula architecture (CD-Vine) and provide a framework for detecting complex dependence structures, risk management implications, and hedging effectiveness. Design/Methodology/Approach — This study used gold-backed cryptocurrencies and three fiat currencies. The vine copula approach was preferred because it applies several distributions and estimates complex dependencies. Hedging effectiveness was measured by constructing simulation-based portfolios optimised with DCC-t-Copula. Benford’s law and realized variance were used to determine the stability of Islamic cryptocurrencies. Findings — According to C-Vine and D-Vine copula models, paper money has a weak tail dependence with gold-backed cryptocurrencies. Only OneGram coin, whose volatility matched the risk of Bitcoin, showed zero irregularities in volume trading. The findings were robust to different estimations based on Minimum Spanning Tree and Dendrogram. Originality/Value — This is the first study to examine Islamic cryptocurrencies’ stability and the significance of hedging effectiveness on gold-backed cryptocurrencies under a copula-based approach. Research Limitations — The study did not apply time-varying vine copula. Practical Implications — The risk management perspective shows insignificant hedge effectiveness in the portfolio of fiat and gold-backed cryptocurrencies.

Purpose: It is crucial to find a better portfolio optimization strategy, considering the cryptocurrencies' asymmetric volatilities. Hence, this research aimed to present dynamic optimization on minimum variance (MVP), equal risk contribution (ERC) and most diversified portfolio (MDP).Design/methodology/approach: This study applied dynamic covariances from multivariate GARCH(1,1) with Student’s-t-distribution. This research also constructed static optimization from the conventional MVP, ERC and MDP as comparison. Moreover, the optimization involved transaction cost and out-of-sample analysis from the rolling windows method. The sample consisted of ten significant cryptocurrencies.Findings: Dynamic optimization enhanced risk-adjusted return. Moreover, dynamic MDP and ERC could win the naïve strategy (1/N) under various estimation windows, and forecast lengths when the transaction cost ranging from 10 bps to 50 bps. The researcher also used another researcher's sample as a robustness test. Findings showed that dynamic optimization (MDP and ERC) outperformed the benchmark.Practical implications: Sophisticated investors may use the dynamic ERC and MDP to optimize cryptocurrencies portfolio.Originality/value: To the best of the author’s knowledge, this is the first paper that studies the dynamic optimization on MVP, ERC and MDP using DCC and ADCC-GARCH with multivariate-t-distribution and rolling windows method.

Purpose: This research aims to select the best-fitting model(s) of equal risk contribution portfolios (ERC). ERC is a robust estimation in the absence of reasonable expectations about future returns.Design/methodology/approach: The portfolio consists of five environmental-friendly exchange-traded funds (ETFs). It applies equal risk optimization, beneficial when the assets are firmly linked, such as the ETFs. This paper operationalizes 20 covariance models in portfolio construction, and a portfolio with classic covariance is the benchmark to beat. To select the best-fitting model(s), the paper applies statistical inferences of the model confidence set. This research also constructs the newly-developed minimum connectedness optimization method and utilizes maximum drawdown as the primary evaluation tool.Findings: The outbreak of COVID-19 hugely impacts the portfolio drawdown. The results also show that the classic covariance is hard to beat, partly explained by estimation error and model misspecification. This paper suggests that equal risk contribution can benefit from copula-based covariance. It consistently and significantly outperforms the other models in various robustness tests.Practical implications: In the absence of substantial predictions about future returns and the existence of strongly linked assets, selecting appropriate portfolio components by risk contribution is a sound choice.Originality/value: This is the first paper to select the best-fitting model(s) of ERC portfolio during the COVID-19.