Improving density forecast by modeling asymmetric features: An application to S&P500 returns

A density forecast is an estimate of the probability distribution of the possible future values of a random variable. From the current literature, an economic time series may have three types of asymmetry: asymmetry in unconditional distribution, asymmetry in conditional distribution, volatility asymmetry. In this paper, we propose three density forecasting methods under two-piece normal assumption to capture these asymmetric features. A GARCH model with two-piece normal distribution is developed to capture asymmetries in the conditional distributions. In this approach, we first estimate parameters of a GARCH model by assuming normal innovations, and then fit a two-piece normal distribution to the empirical residuals. Block bootstrap procedure, and moving average method with two-piece normal distribution are presented for volatility asymmetry and asymmetry in the conditional distributions. Application of the developed methods to the weekly S&P500 returns illustrates that forecast quality can be significantly improved by modeling these asymmetric features.     

Conditional VaR estimation using Pearson’s type IV distribution

This paper presents a new value at risk (VaR) estimation model for equity returns time series and tests it extensively on Stock Indices of 14 countries. Two most important stylized facts of such series are volatility clustering, and non-normality as a result of fat tails of the return distribution. While volatility clustering has been extensively studied using the GARCH model and its various extensions, the phenomenon of non-normality has not been comprehensively explored, at least in the context of VaR estimation. A combination of extreme value theory (EVT) and GARCH has been explored to analyze financial data showing non-normal behavior. This paper proposes a combination of the Pearson’s Type IV distribution and the GARCH (1, 1) approach to furnish a new method with superior predictive abilities. The approach is back tested for the entire sample as well as for a holdout sample using rolling windows.     

Asymptotic Multivariate Dominance: A Financial Application

We propose a multivariate stochastic dominance relation aimed at ranking different financial markets/sectors from the point of view of a non-satiable risk averse investor. In particular, we assume that the vector of returns of a given market is in the domain of attraction of a symmetric stable Paretian law in order to take into account the asymptotic behaviour of the financial returns. We determine the stochastic dominance rule for stable symmetric distributions, where the stability parameter plays a crucial role. Consequently, the multivariate rule for ordering markets is based on a comparison between i) location parameters, ii) dispersion parameters, and iii) stability indices. Finally, we apply the method to the equity markets of the four countries with the highest gross domestic product in 2013, namely, the US, China, Japan and Germany. In this empirical comparison we examine the ex ante and ex post dominance between stock markets, either assuming that the returns are jointly (or conditionally, for a robust approach) Gaussian distributed, or in the domain of attraction of a stable sub-Gaussian law.     

GARCH模型对期铜市场风险的研究

期货市场是一个高风险的市场,因此需要有效地控制并且监管风险。本文以上海期铜市场97年到04年的收盘价格为研究样本,通过拉格朗日检验,发现价格收益率序列服从ARCH过程,在正态、student-t和GED三种分布假设下,估计了GARCH(1,1)模型的参数,结果表明student-t假设下模型的拟和程度较好,然后利用EGARCH(1,1)-M模型检验了上海期铜市场杠杆效应和波动集群效应。最后在两种置信水平下,利用GARCH(1,1)和Risk Metrics方法计算了期铜市场每天的VaR,Kupiec检验表明基于t分布的GARCH(1,1)模型能更准确地反映上海期铜市场的风险。     

机制转换条件下股市收益率跳跃行为研究:基于RS-ARJI模型的以中国股市为例的实证分析

为检验股市收益率机制转换特性,考察机制转换条件下股市收益率的跳跃特征,以及在不同机制下跳跃行为对股市收益率的冲击效应,将Markov机制转换思想引入自回归跳跃(ARJI)模型,构建一个机制转换自回归跳跃(RS-ARM)模型.基于该模型对中国股市进行实证研究,结果表明:股市存在高、低波动两种机制,高波动时期的跳跃幅度和强度及其对股市收益率的冲击均大于低波动时期.同时,波动率估计和预测评价指标显示,RS-ARJI模型优于目前被广泛使用的GARCH模型和ARJI模型.     

Bayesian modeling and forecasting of Value‐at‐Risk via threshold realized volatility

This study proposes a threshold realized generalized autoregressive conditional heteroscedastic (GARCH) model that jointly models daily returns and realized volatility, thereby taking into account the bias and asymmetry of realized volatility. We incorporate this threshold realized GARCH model with skew Student‐t innovations as the observation equation, view this model as a sharp transition model, and treat the realized volatility as a proxy for volatility under this nonlinear structure. Through the Bayesian Markov chain Monte Carlo method, the model can jointly estimate the parameters in the return equation, the volatility equation, and the measurement equation. As an illustration, we conduct a simulation study and apply the proposed method to the US and Japan stock markets. Based on quantile forecasting and volatility estimation, we find that the threshold heteroskedastic framework with realized volatility successfully models the asymmetric dynamic structure. We also investigate the predictive ability of volatility by comparing the proposed model with the traditional GARCH model as well as some popular asymmetric GARCH and realized GARCH models. This threshold realized GARCH model with skew Student‐t innovations outperforms the competing risk models in out‐of‐sample volatility and Value‐at‐Risk forecasting.     

Volatility forecasting via SVR–GARCH with mixture of Gaussian kernels

The support vector regression (SVR) is a supervised machine learning technique that has been successfully employed to forecast financial volatility. As the SVR is a kernel-based technique, the choice of the kernel has a great impact on its forecasting accuracy. Empirical results show that SVRs with hybrid kernels tend to beat single-kernel models in terms of forecasting accuracy. Nevertheless, no application of hybrid kernel SVR to financial volatility forecasting has been performed in previous researches. Given that the empirical evidence shows that the stock market oscillates between several possible regimes, in which the overall distribution of returns it is a mixture of normals, we attempt to find the optimal number of mixture of Gaussian kernels that improve the one-period-ahead volatility forecasting of SVR based on GARCH(1,1). The forecast performance of a mixture of one, two, three and four Gaussian kernels are evaluated on the daily returns of Nikkei and Ibovespa indexes and compared with SVR–GARCH with Morlet wavelet kernel, standard GARCH, Glosten–Jagannathan–Runkle (GJR) and nonlinear EGARCH models with normal, student-t, skew-student-t and generalized error distribution (GED) innovations by using mean absolute error (MAE), root mean squared error (RMSE) and robust Diebold–Mariano test. The results of the out-of-sample forecasts suggest that the SVR–GARCH with a mixture of Gaussian kernels can improve the volatility forecasts and capture the regime-switching behavior.     

基于GED—GARCH模型的中国原油价格波动特征研究

本文采用中国大庆原油价格日平均交易数据,建立了基于GED分布的GARCH(1,1)、GARCH-M(1,1)和TGARCH(1,1)三个模型,描述了中国原油价格与国际接轨以来的波动特征。实证结果表明,与国际油价类似,中国原油价格的波动也存在显著的GARCH效应,但其波动冲击的半衰期要比国际油价短,为5天。而且,中国原油收益率受到预期风险的负向影响,表明中国原油市场并非完全市场化运作,当然这种负向影响程度较小,约为8%。另外,中国原油价格的波动存在显著的杠杆效应,相同幅度的油价下跌比油价上涨对未来油价的波动具有更大的影响,前者是后者的1.7倍左右。最后,基于GED分布的GARCH模型比基于正态分布的GARCH模型能够更好地描述中国原油价格的波动特征,并且具有较好的预测能力。     

GARCH(1,1)模型及其在汇率条件波动预测中的应用

检验人民币/日元汇率与波动的时间序列特征,证实存在简单单位根过程及条件异方差性。计算表明,其汇率变化率的ARMA及ARMA/GARCH组合模型的建模不成立,GARCH、EGARCH、IGARCH模型的建模效果接近,且GARCH(1,1)拟合效果最好。GARCH(1,1)模型的跨度为一年的样本外条件异方差预测,显示出该年末汇率的震荡,与实际情况一致。GARCH(1,1)是汇率数据建娱的首选模型。     

Exploratory Analysis and Modeling of Stock Returns

In this article, novel joint semiparametric spline-based modeling of conditional mean and volatility of financial time series is proposed and evaluated on daily stock return data. The modeling includes functions of lagged response variables and time as predictors. The latter can be viewed as a proxy for omitted economic variables contributing to the underlying dynamics. The conditional mean model is additive. The conditional volatility model is multiplicative and linearized with a logarithmic transformation. In addition, a cube-root power transformation is employed to symmetrize the lagged response variables. Using cubic splines, the model can be written as a multiple linear regression, thereby allowing predictions to be obtained in a simple manner. As outliers are often present in financial data, reliable estimation of the model parameters is achieved by trimmed least-square (TLS) estimation for which a reasonable amount of trimming is suggested. To obtain a parsimonious specification of the model, a new model selection criterion corresponding to TLS is derived. Moreover, the (three-parameter) generalized gamma distribution is identified as suitable for the absolute multiplicative errors and shown to work well for predictions and also for the calculation of quantiles, which is important to determine the value at risk. All model choices are motivated by a detailed analysis of IBM, HP, and SAP daily returns. The prediction performance is compared to the classical generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity (GARCH) and asymmetric power GARCH (APGARCH) models as well as to a nonstationary time-trend volatility model. The results suggest that the proposed model may possess a high predictive power for future conditional volatility. Supplementary materials for this article are available online.     

Modeling volatility and dependency of agricultural price and production indices of Thailand: Static versus time-varying copulas

Volatility and dependence structure are two main sources of uncertainty in many economic issues, such as exchange rates, future prices and agricultural product prices etc. who fully embody uncertainty among relationship and variation. This paper aims at estimating the dependency between the percentage changes of the agricultural price and agricultural production indices of Thailand and also their conditional volatilities using copula-based GARCH models. The motivation of this paper is twofold. First, the strategic department of agriculture of Thailand would like to have reliable empirical models for the dependency and volatilities for use in policy strategy. Second, this paper provides less restrictive models for dependency and the conditional volatility GARCH. The copula-based multivariate analysis used in this paper nested the traditional multivariate as a special case (Tae-Hwy and Xiangdong, 2009) [13]. Appropriate marginal distributions for both, the percentage changes of the agricultural price and agricultural production indices were selected for their estimation. Static as well as time varying copulas were estimated. The empirical results were found that the suitable margins were skew t distribution and the time varying copula i.e., the time varying rotate Joe copula (270°) was the choice for the policy makers to follow. The one-period ahead forecasted-growth rate of agricultural price index conditional on growth rate of agricultural production index was also provided as an example of forecasting it using the resulted margins and time-varying copula based GARCH model.     

全球主要股市波动率的聚类特征分析

本文采用多路归一化割谱聚类方法、单变量GARCH模型和Granger因果检验相结合的模型,分阶段研究了1994-2014年间全球主要股市波动率的聚类特征。首先,利用单变量GARCH模型分别提取全球主要股市的波动率;其次,借助多路归一化割谱聚类方法的特殊性质刻画了全球主要股市波动率的聚类数目、聚类质量以及聚类结果的稳定性等特征;最后,利用Granger因果检验模型分析不同类的代表元股市间的波动溢出效应和同一类内股市间的波动溢出效应。实证结果表明,与非金融危机阶段相比,在金融危机期间全球主要股市波动率的聚类数目较多、聚类质量较高、聚类结果相对稳定、并且全球主要股市间的波动溢出效应增强。     

A GARCH option pricing model with α-stable innovations

We develop an option pricing model which is based on a GARCH asset return process with α-stable innovations with truncated tails. The approach utilizes a canonic martingale measure as pricing measure which provides the possibility of a model calibration to market prices. The GARCH-stable option pricing model allows the explanation of some well-known anomalies in empirical data as volatility clustering and heavy tailedness of the return distribution. Finally, the results of Monte Carlo simulations concerning the option price and the implied volatility with respect to different strike and maturity levels are presented.     

A conditional-SGT-VaR approach with alternative GARCH models

This paper proposes a conditional technique for the estimation of VaR and expected shortfall measures based on the skewed generalized t (SGT) distribution. The estimation of the conditional mean and conditional variance of returns is based on ten popular variations of the GARCH model. The results indicate that the TS-GARCH and EGARCH models have the best overall performance. The remaining GARCH specifications, except in a few cases, produce acceptable results. An unconditional SGT-VaR performs well on an in-sample evaluation and fails the tests on an out-of-sample evaluation. The latter indicates the need to incorporate time-varying mean and volatility estimates in the computation of VaR and expected shortfall measures.     

Application in stochastic volatility models of nonlinear regression with stochastic design

In regression model with stochastic design, the observations have been primarily treated as a simple random sample from a bivariate distribution. It is of enormous practical significance to generalize the situation to stochastic processes. In this paper, estimation and hypothesis testing problems in stochastic volatility model are considered, when the volatility depends on a nonlinear function of the state variable of other stochastic process, but the correlation coefficient |ρ|≠±1. The methods are applied to estimate the volatility of stock returns from Shanghai stock exchange. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

基于Expectile和Realized GARCH模型的波动率预测

Realized GARCH模型是预测波动率的经典模型之一,最小化非对称二次损失函数的Expectile对收益率尾部分布更加敏感,我们在Realized GARCH模型的基础上引入Expectile提出Expectile-Realized GARCH模型。以沪深300指数的高频收益率为例建模分析,对比不同模型下的波动率预测效果,发现Expectile-Realized GARCH模型较Realized GARCH模型对波动率预测能力更好。其中,当风险水平为95%时,对应的Expectile-Realized GARCH波动率预测能力最好。     

基于MCMC算法的人民币汇率市场的分析——双门限非对称GARCH模型的应用

本文旨在考察,汇改后美元/人民币汇率前期收益的影响下,人民币汇率市场上非美元/人民币汇率收益均值和波动不对称的程度。为了捕捉非美元汇率收益的均值和波动不对称的特点,我们设定双门限非线性的GARCH模型,结合GJR效应(即加入非美元收益利空或利好消息的影响),利用基于MCMC算法的贝叶斯推断来完成。应用中我们选取了美元(欧元、日元、港元)/人民币日汇率数据进行分析,发现了门限非线性的结果,表明在美元和非美元汇率本身双重变化的影响下,非美元汇率收益的均值和波动同时表现出非对称的特点。并且在美元收益利好消息的影响下,美元汇率对非美元汇率的溢出效应明显增强,非美元表现出低均值回归的特点。     

基于双因子已实现GARCH模型的波动率预测研究

准确地预测金融市场的波动率对市场管理者和参与者而言都是至关重要的。本文在标准已实现GARCH模型基础上,将条件方差乘性分解为长期方差和短期方差两部分,分别构造包含杠杆函数的长期方差方程和短期方差方程,用以捕捉波动率的长记忆性和短期微观波动。运用上证综指和日经指数的日收盘价、已实现方差和已实现核波动此类高频数据进行实证分析,结果表明:与标准已实现GARCH模型相比,两指数的双因子已实现GARCH模型在样本内表现出更大的似然估计值;通过样本外误差函数分析和DM检验,双因子已实现GARCH模型也取得更好表现。     

基于修正的已实现阈值幂变差的股市跳跃波动行为研究

基于非参数统计方法,利用考虑金融资产价格跳跃和杠杆效应的时点波动估计方法修正已实现阈值幂变差,构造甄别跳跃的检验统计量,对金融资产价格中的随机波动、有限活跃跳跃和无限活跃跳跃等问题进行综合研究。为同时吸收波动率的异方差集聚效应和收益率的非对称效应,对原有的已实现波动率异质自回归预测模型进行拓展,将非对称的异质性自回归模型的误差项设定为GARCH模型,以考察跳跃波动序列与连续波动序列之间的复杂关系。利用沪深股指高频数据进行实证研究,包括进行跳跃识别,跳跃活动程度检验和波动率预测效果对比。研究结果表明,沪深股市同时存在布朗运动成分、有限活跃跳跃和无限活跃跳跃成分,其中连续路径方差占主体。同时,收益和波动间的杠杆效应显著,无论短期还是长期,连续波动和跳跃波动对波动率的预测均具有显著影响,同时考虑股价的跳跃、波动和杠杆效应因素有助于更准确地刻画资产价格动态过程。     

Modeling the dynamics of interest rate volatility with skewed fat-tailed distributions

This paper proposes generalized parametric models of the short-term interest rate that nest one-factor CEV and discrete time GARCH models. The paper estimates the generalized and nested models with skewed fat-tailed distributions to determine the correct specification of the conditional distribution of interest rates. The results indicate that the discrete time models that incorporate the level and GARCH effects into the diffusion function and that accommodate the tail-thickness of the interest rate distribution perform much better than the CEV model in forecasting the future volatility of interest rates. The results also show that the significance of nonlinearity in the drift function relies crucially on the specification of the volatility function.