Entropy Based Student’s t-Process Dynamical Model

Volatility, which represents the magnitude of fluctuating asset prices or returns, is used in the problems of finance to design optimal asset allocations and to calculate the price of derivatives. Since volatility is unobservable, it is identified and estimated by latent variable models known as volatility fluctuation models. Almost all conventional volatility fluctuation models are linear time-series models and thus are difficult to capture nonlinear and/or non-Gaussian properties of volatility dynamics. In this study, we propose an entropy based Student’s t-process Dynamical model (ETPDM) as a volatility fluctuation model combined with both nonlinear dynamics and non-Gaussian noise. The ETPDM estimates its latent variables and intrinsic parameters by a robust particle filtering based on a generalized H-theorem for a relative entropy. To test the performance of the ETPDM, we implement numerical experiments for financial time-series and confirm the robustness for a small number of particles by comparing with the conventional particle filtering.     

Idiosyncratic risk in the Dow Jones Eurostoxx50 Index

Recent evidence by Campbell et al. [J.Y. Campbell, M. Lettau B.G. Malkiel, Y. Xu, Have individual stocks become more volatile? An empirical exploration of idiosyncratic risk, The Journal of Finance (February) (2001)] shows an increase in firm-level volatility and a decline of the correlation among stock returns in the US. In relation to the Euro-Area stock markets, we find that both aggregate firm-level volatility and average stock market correlation have trended upwards.We estimate a linear model of the market risk–return relationship nested in an EGARCH(1, 1)-M model for conditional second moments. We then show that traditional estimates of the conditional risk–return relationship, that use ex-post excess-returns as the conditioning information set, lead to joint tests of the theoretical model (usually the ICAPM) and of the Efficient Market Hypothesis in its strong form.To overcome this problem we propose alternative measures of expected market risk based on implied volatility extracted from traded option prices and we discuss the conditions under which implied volatility depends solely on expected risk. We then regress market excess-returns on lagged market implied variance computed from implied market volatility to estimate the relationship between expected market excess-returns and expected market risk.We investigate whether, as predicted by the ICAPM, the expected market risk is the main factor in explaining the market risk premium and the latter is independent of aggregate idiosyncratic risk.     

Portfolio management under sudden changes in volatility and heterogeneous investment horizons

We analyze the implications for portfolio management of accounting for conditional heteroskedasticity and sudden changes in volatility, based on a sample of weekly data of the Dow Jones Country Titans, the CBT-municipal bond, spot and futures prices of commodities for the period 1992–2005. To that end, we first proceed to utilize the ICSS algorithm to detect long-term volatility shifts, and incorporate that information into PGARCH models fitted to the returns series. At the next stage, we simulate returns series and compute a wavelet-based value at risk, which takes into consideration the investor's time horizon. We repeat the same procedure for artificial data generated from semi-parametric estimates of the distribution functions of returns, which account for fat tails. Our estimation results show that neglecting GARCH effects and volatility shifts may lead to an overestimation of financial risk at different time horizons. In addition, we conclude that investors benefit from holding commodities as their low or even negative correlation with stock and bond indices contribute to portfolio diversification.     

Stock price dynamics and option valuations under volatility feedback effect

According to the volatility feedback effect, an unexpected increase in squared volatility leads to an immediate decline in the price–dividend ratio. In this paper, we consider the properties of stock price dynamics and option valuations under the volatility feedback effect by modeling the joint dynamics of stock price, dividends, and volatility in continuous time. Most importantly, our model predicts the negative effect of an increase in squared return volatility on the value of deep-in-the-money call options and, furthermore, attempts to explain the volatility puzzle. We theoretically demonstrate a mechanism by which the market price of diffusion return risk, or an equity risk-premium, affects option prices and empirically illustrate how to identify that mechanism using forward-looking information on option contracts. Our theoretical and empirical results support the relevance of the volatility feedback effect. Overall, the results indicate that the prevailing practice of ignoring the time-varying dividend yield in option pricing can lead to oversimplification of the stock market dynamics.     

Network formation in a multi-asset artificial stock market

A multi-asset artificial stock market is developed. In the market, stocks are assigned to a number of sectors and traded by heterogeneous investors. The mechanism of continuous double auction is employed to clear order book and form daily closed prices. Simulation results of prices at the sector level show an intra-sector similarity and inter-sector distinctiveness, and returns of individual stocks have stylized facts that are ubiquitous in the real-world stock market. We find that the market risk factor has critical impact on both network topology transition and connection formation, and that sector risk factors account for the formation of intra-sector links and sector-based local interaction. In addition, the number of community in threshold-based networks is correlated negatively and positively with the value of correlation coefficients and the ratio of intra-sector links, which are respectively determined by intensity of sector risk factors and the number of sectors.     

Forecasting volatility of SSEC in Chinese stock market using multifractal analysis

In this paper, taking about 7 years’ high-frequency data of the Shanghai Stock Exchange Composite Index (SSEC) as an example, we propose a daily volatility measure based on the multifractal spectrum of the high-frequency price variability within a trading day. An ARFIMA model is used to depict the dynamics of this multifractal volatility (MFV) measures. The one-day ahead volatility forecasting performances of the MFV model and some other existing volatility models, such as the realized volatility model, stochastic volatility model and GARCH, are evaluated by the superior prediction ability (SPA) test. The empirical results show that under several loss functions, the MFV model obtains the best forecasting accuracy.     

Multifractal analysis of the Korean agricultural market

We have studied the long-term memory effects of the Korean agricultural market using the detrended fluctuation analysis (DFA) method. In general, the return time series of various financial data, including stock indices, foreign exchange rates, and commodity prices, are uncorrelated in time, while the volatility time series are strongly correlated. However, we found that the return time series of Korean agricultural commodity prices are anti-correlated in time, while the volatility time series are correlated. The $n$-point correlations of time series were also examined, and it was found that a multifractal structure exists in Korean agricultural market prices.     

Long memory properties in return and volatility: Evidence from the Korean stock market

In this paper, we study the dual long memory property of the Korean stock market. For this purpose, the ARFIMA-FIGARCH model is applied to two daily Korean stock price indices (KOSPI and KOSDAQ). Our empirical results indicate that long memory dynamics in the returns and volatility can be adequately estimated by the joint ARFIMA-FIGARCH model. We also found that the assumption of a skewed Student-t distribution is better for incorporating the tendency of asymmetric leptokurtosis in a return distribution.     

Probability distribution function and multiscaling properties in the Korean stock market

We consider the probability distribution function (pdf) and the multiscaling properties of the index and the traded volume in the Korean stock market. We observed the power law of the pdf at the fat tail region for the return, volatility, the traded volume, and changes of the traded volume. We also investigate the multifractality in the Korean stock market. We consider the multifractality by the detrended fluctuation analysis (MFDFA). We observed the multiscaling behaviors for index, return, traded volume, and the changes of the traded volume. We apply MFDFA method for the randomly shuffled time series to observe the effects of the autocorrelations. The multifractality is strongly originated from the long time correlations of the time series.     

Empirical behavior of a world stock index from intra-day to monthly time scales

Most of the papers that study the distributional and fractal properties of financial instruments focus on stock prices or foreign exchange rates. This typically leads to mixed results concerning the distributions of log-returns and some multi-fractal properties of exchange rates, stock prices, and regional indices. This paper uses a well diversified world stock index as the central object of analysis. Such index approximates the growth optimal portfolio, which is demonstrated under the benchmark approach, it is the ideal reference unit for studying basic securities. When denominating this world index in units of a given currency, one measures the movements of the currency against the entire market. This provides a least disturbed observation of the currency dynamics. In this manner, one can expect to disentangle, e.g., the superposition of the two currencies involved in an exchange rate. This benchmark approach to the empirical analysis of financial data allows us to establish remarkable stylized facts. Most important is the observation that the repeatedly documented multi-fractal appearance of financial time series is very weak and much less pronounced than the deviation of the mono-scaling properties from Brownian-motion type scaling. The generalized Hurst exponent H(2) assumes typical values between 0.55 and 0.6. Accordingly, autocorrelations of log-returns decay according to a power law, and the quadratic variation vanishes when going to vanishing observation time step size. Furthermore, one can identify the Student t distribution as the log-return distribution of a well-diversified world stock index for long time horizons when a long enough data series is used for estimation. The study of dependence properties, finally, reveals that jumps at daily horizon originate primarily in the stock market while at 5min horizon they originate in the foreign exchange market. The principal message of the empirical analysis is that there is evidence that a diffusion model without multi-scaling could reasonably well model the dynamics of a broadly diversified world stock index.     

Asymmetric conditional volatility in international stock markets

Recent studies show that a negative shock in stock prices will generate more volatility than a positive shock of similar magnitude. The aim of this paper is to appraise the hypothesis under which the conditional mean and the conditional variance of stock returns are asymmetric functions of past information. We compare the results for the Portuguese Stock Market Index PSI 20 with six other Stock Market Indices, namely the SP 500, FTSE 100, DAX 30, CAC 40, ASE 20, and IBEX 35. In order to assess asymmetric volatility we use autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity specifications known as TARCH and EGARCH. We also test for asymmetry after controlling for the effect of macroeconomic factors on stock market returns using TAR and M-TAR specifications within a VAR framework. Our results show that the conditional variance is an asymmetric function of past innovations raising proportionately more during market declines, a phenomenon known as the leverage effect. However, when we control for the effect of changes in macroeconomic variables, we find no significant evidence of asymmetric behaviour of the stock market returns. There are some signs that the Portuguese Stock Market tends to show somewhat less market efficiency than other markets since the effect of the shocks appear to take a longer time to dissipate.     

Time-varying volatility in Malaysian stock exchange: An empirical study using multiple-volatility-shift fractionally integrated model

This article investigated the influences of structural breaks on the fractionally integrated time-varying volatility model in the Malaysian stock markets which included the Kuala Lumpur composite index and four major sectoral indices. A fractionally integrated time-varying volatility model combined with sudden changes is developed to study the possibility of structural change in the empirical data sets. Our empirical results showed substantial reduction in fractional differencing parameters after the inclusion of structural change during the Asian financial and currency crises. Moreover, the fractionally integrated model with sudden change in volatility performed better in the estimation and specification evaluations.     

Correlation and volatility in an Indian stock market: A random matrix approach

We examine the volatility of an Indian stock market in terms of correlation of stocks and quantify the volatility using the random matrix approach. First we discuss trends observed in the pattern of stock prices in the Bombay Stock Exchange for the three-year period 2000–2002. Random matrix analysis is then applied to study the relationship between the coupling of stocks and volatility. The study uses daily returns of 70 stocks for successive time windows of length 85 days for the year 2001. We compare the properties of matrix C of correlations between price fluctuations in time regimes characterized by different volatilities. Our analyses reveal that (i) the largest (deviating) eigenvalue of C correlates highly with the volatility of the index, (ii) there is a shift in the distribution of the components of the eigenvector corresponding to the largest eigenvalue across regimes of different volatilities, (iii) the inverse participation ratio for this eigenvector anti-correlates significantly with the market fluctuations and finally, (iv) this eigenvector of C can be used to set up a Correlation Index, CI whose temporal evolution is significantly correlated with the volatility of the overall market index.     

Information Theoretic Causality Detection between Financial and Sentiment Data

The interaction between the flow of sentiment expressed on blogs and media and the dynamics of the stock market prices are analyzed through an information-theoretic measure, the transfer entropy, to quantify causality relations. We analyzed daily stock price and daily social media sentiment for the top 50 companies in the Standard & Poor (S&P) index during the period from November 2018 to November 2020. We also analyzed news mentioning these companies during the same period. We found that there is a causal flux of information that links those companies. The largest fraction of significant causal links is between prices and between sentiments, but there is also significant causal information which goes both ways from sentiment to prices and from prices to sentiment. We observe that the strongest causal signal between sentiment and prices is associated with the Tech sector.     

Forecasting volatility of fuel oil futures in China: GARCH-type,SV or realized volatility models?

In most previous works on forecasting oil market volatility, squared daily returns were taken as the proxy of unobserved actual volatility. However, as demonstrated by Andersen and Bollerslev (1998) [22], this proxy with too high measurement noise could be perfectly outperformed by a so-called realized volatility (RV) measure calculated by the cumulative sum of squared intraday returns. With this motivation, we further extend earlier works by employing intraday high-frequency data to compare the performance of three typical volatility models in the daily out-of-sample volatility forecasting of fuel oil futures on the Shanghai Futures Exchange (SHFE): the GARCH-type, stochastic volatility (SV) and realized volatility models. By taking RV as the proxy of actual daily volatility and then computing forecasting errors, we find that the realized volatility model based on intraday high-frequency data produces significantly more accurate volatility forecasts than the GARCH-type and SV models based on daily returns. Furthermore, the SV model outperforms many linear and nonlinear GARCH-type models that capture long-memory volatility and/or the asymmetric leverage effect in volatility. These results also prove that abundant volatility information is available in intraday high-frequency data, and can be used to construct more accurate oil volatility forecasting models.     

The properties and mechanism of long-term memory in nonparametric volatility

Recent empirical literature documents the presence of long-term memory in return volatility. But the mechanism of the existence of long-term memory is still unclear. In this paper, we investigate the origin and properties of long-term memory with nonparametric volatility, using high-frequency time series data of the Chinese Shanghai Composite Stock Price Index. We perform Detrended Fluctuation Analysis (DFA) on three different nonparametric volatility estimators with different sampling frequencies. For the same volatility series, the Hurst exponents reduce as the sampling time interval increases, but they are still larger than 1/2, which means that no matter how the interval changes, it still cannot change the existence of long memory. RRV presents a relatively stable property on long-term memory and is less influenced by sampling frequency. RV and RBV have some evolutionary trends depending on time intervals, which indicating that the jump component has no significant impact on the long-term memory property. This suggests that the presence of long-term memory in nonparametric volatility can be contributed to the integrated variance component. Considering the impact of microstructure noise, RBV and RRV still present long-term memory under various time intervals. We can infer that the presence of long-term memory in realized volatility is not affected by market microstructure noise. Our findings imply that the long-term memory phenomenon is an inherent characteristic of the data generating process, not a result of microstructure noise or volatility clustering.     

Forecasting volatility in Shanghai and Shenzhen markets based on multifractal analysis

This paper analyzes the multifractality in Shanghai and Shenzhen stock markets using multifractal spectrum analysis and multifractal detrended fluctuation analysis. We find that the main source of multifractality is long-range correlations of large and small fluctuations. Then, we introduce a multifractal volatility measure (MV) and find that by taking MV as daily conditional volatility, the simulated series displayed similar “stylized facts” to the original daily return series. By capturing the dynamics of MV using the ARFIMA model, we find that the out-of-sample forecasting performance of the ARFIMA-MV model is better than some GARCH-class models and the ARFIMA-RV model under some criteria of loss function.     

Long memory volatility in Chinese stock markets

In this study, the long memory property in the volatility of Chinese stock markets is examined. For this purpose, we applied two semi-parametric tests (GPH and LW) and the FIGARCH model, to four Chinese market indices: Shanghai A, Shanghai B, Shenzhen A and Shenzhen B. From the results of our analysis, we can conclude that the volatility of Chinese stock markets exhibits long memory features, and that the assumption of non-normality provides better specifications regarding long memory volatility processes.     

The Pietra term structures of financial assets

This paper explores an elemental connection between call options-the most commonly tradable financial derivatives, implied volatility term structures-critical “market information” emanating from call-option prices, and the Pietra index-a quantitative economic measure of societal egalitarianism. Our study: (i) unveils an intrinsic “Pietra structure” of call-option prices; (ii) introduces the notion of the “Pietra term structures” of financial assets; (iii) describes the probabilistic meaning of the Pietra term structures; (iv) establishes an explicit nonlinear one-to-one mapping between the Pietra term structures and the implied volatility term structures of financial assets. The results presented in this paper provide a deep insight into the econophysics of call options and implied volatility term structures.