Optimal Turnover, Liquidity, and Autocorrelation

Abstract: The steady-state turnover of a trading strategy is of clear interest to practitioners and portfolio managers, as is the steady-state Sharpe ratio. In this article, we show that in a convenient Gaussian process model, the steady-state turnover can be computed explicitly, and obeys a clear relation to the liquidity of the asset and to the autocorrelation of the alpha forecast signals. Indeed, we find that steady-state optimal turnover is given by $\gamma \sqrt{n+1}$ where $\gamma$ is a liquidity-adjusted notion of risk-aversion, and $n$ is the ratio of mean-reversion speed to $\gamma$.