Let initial wealth be and let be the number of units held of risky asset ; the bank investment is . Put . Terminal wealth is normal, with mean and variance . The expectation of the exponential utility is
For and positive definite covariance matrix , maximizing this is equivalent to maximizing the certainty equivalent . Thus the optimal investment is
All investors have proportional risky holdings. A market portfolio can therefore be represented by , with any positive scalar multiple giving the same return. Suppose its initial value is positive and . Set . For returns and ,
The beta of an asset is its covariance with the market return divided by the market variance. Consequently
This is the capital asset pricing model. Since , dividing the excess-return identity by gives the Sharpe ratio identity
These ratio statements require nonzero variances and nonzero initial portfolio value. If is singular and is in its range, replace by its pseudoinverse; any kernel holding can be added to an optimizer. If has a component in the kernel, it gives a deterministic excess gain that can be scaled without bound, so there is no finite optimal portfolio. If , there is no distinguished risky market portfolio and its beta ratios are undefined.