An investor might choose to invest a proportion of his or her wealth in a portfolio of risky assets with the remainder in cash—earning interest at the risk free rate (or indeed may borrow money to fund his or her purchase of risky assets in which case there is a negative cash weighting). Here, the ratio of risky assets to risk free asset does not determine overall return—this relationship is clearly linear. It is thus possible to achieve a particular return in one of two ways:
- By investing all of one's wealth in a risky portfolio,
- or by investing a proportion in a risky portfolio and the remainder in cash (either borrowed or invested).
For a given level of return, however, only one of these portfolios will be optimal (in the sense of lowest risk). Since the risk free asset is, by definition, uncorrelated with any other asset, option 2 will generally have the lower variance and hence be the more efficient of the two.
This relationship also holds for portfolios along the efficient frontier: a higher return portfolio plus cash is more efficient than a lower return portfolio alone for that lower level of return. For a given risk free rate, there is only one optimal portfolio which can be combined with cash to achieve the lowest level of risk for any possible return. This is the market portfolio.
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