Ensemble vs. time averages in financial time series analysis

Empirical analysis of financial time series suggests that the underlying stochastic dynamics are not only non-stationary, but also exhibit non-stationary increments. However, financial time series are commonly analyzed using the sliding interval technique that assumes stationary increments. We propose an alternative approach that is based on an ensemble over trading days. To determine the effects of time averaging techniques on analysis outcomes, we create an intraday activity model that exhibits periodic variable diffusion dynamics and we assess the model data using both ensemble and time averaging techniques. We find that ensemble averaging techniques detect the underlying dynamics correctly, whereas sliding intervals approaches fail. As many traded assets exhibit characteristic intraday volatility patterns, our work implies that ensemble averages approaches will yield new insight into the study of financial markets’ dynamics.     

Multifractality in stock indexes: Fact or Fiction?

Multifractal analysis and extensive statistical tests are performed upon intraday minutely data within individual trading days for four stock market indexes (including HSI, SZSC, S&P 500, and NASDAQ) to check whether the indexes (instead of the returns) possess multifractality. We find that the mass exponent τ(q) is linear and the singularity α(q) is close to 1 for all trading days and all indexes. Furthermore, we find strong evidence showing that the scaling behaviors of the original data sets cannot be distinguished from those of shuffled time series. Hence, the so-called multifractality in the intraday stock market indexes is merely an illusion.     

How fast do stock prices adjust to market efficiency? Evidence from a detrended fluctuation analysis

In this paper we analyse price fluctuations with the aim of measuring how long the market takes to adjust prices to weak-form efficiency, i.e., how long it takes for prices to adjust to a fractional Brownian motion with a Hurst exponent of 0.5. The Hurst exponent is estimated for different time horizons using detrended fluctuation analysis–a method suitable for non-stationary series with trends–in order to identify at which time scale the Hurst exponent is consistent with the efficient market hypothesis. Using high-frequency share price, exchange rate and stock data, we show how price dynamics exhibited important deviations from efficiency for time periods of up to 15 min; thereafter, price dynamics was consistent with a geometric Brownian motion. The intraday behaviour of the series also indicated that price dynamics at trade opening and close was hardly consistent with efficiency, which would enable investors to exploit price deviations from fundamental values. This result is consistent with intraday volume, volatility and transaction time duration patterns.     

Intraday volatility spillovers between spot and futures indices: Evidence from the Korean stock market

This study provides empirical evidence of the relationship between spot and futures markets in Korea. In particular, the study focuses on the volatility spillover relationship between spot and futures markets by using three high-frequency (10 min, 30 min, and 1 h time-scales) intraday data sets of KOSPI 200 spot and futures contracts. The results indicate a strong bi-directional causal relationship between futures and spot markets, suggesting that return volatility in the spot market can influence that in the futures market and vice versa. Thus, the results indicate that new information is reflected in futures and spot markets simultaneously. This bi-directional causal relationship provides market participants with important guidance on understanding the intraday information transmission between the two markets. Thus, on a given trading day, there may be sudden and sharp increases or decreases in return volatility in the Korean stock market as a result of positive feedback and synchronization of spot and futures markets.     

Corruption and stock market development: A quantitative approach

Studying the relation between corruption and economic factors and examining its consequences for economic development have attracted many economists and physicists in recent years. The purpose of this paper is to focus on the role of stock market development on corruption. Analyzing a data set of corruption and stock market development measures such as market capitalization and total value of share trading for 46 countries around the world for the period 2007–2009, we examine the dependence of the Corruption Perception Index (CPI) on stock market development. Our findings suggest that there exists a power-law dependence between corruption and stock market development. We also observe a negative relation between level of corruption and financial system improvement.     

Long-term correlations and multifractal nature in the intertrade durations of a liquid Chinese stock and its warrant

The intertrade duration of equities is an important financial measure, characterizing trading activities; it is defined as the waiting time between successive trades of an equity. Using the ultrahigh-frequency data of a liquid Chinese stock and its associated warrant, we perform a comparative investigation of the statistical properties of their intertrade duration time series. The distributions of the two equities can be better described by the shifted power-law form than the Weibull form, and their scaled distributions do not collapse onto a single curve. Although the intertrade durations of the two equities have very different magnitude, their intraday patterns exhibit very similar shapes. Both detrended fluctuation analysis (DFA) and detrending moving average analysis (DMA) show that the 1 min intertrade duration time series of the two equities are strongly correlated. In addition, both multifractal detrended fluctuation analysis (MFDFA) and multifractal detrending moving average analysis (MFDMA) unveil that the 1 min intertrade durations possess multifractal nature. However, the difference between the two singularity spectra of the two equities obtained from the MFDMA is much smaller than that from the MFDFA.     

Allan deviation analysis of financial return series

We perform a scaling analysis for the return series of different financial assets applying the Allan deviation (ADEV), which is used in the time and frequency metrology to characterize quantitatively the stability of frequency standards since it has demonstrated to be a robust quantity to analyze fluctuations of non-stationary time series for different observation intervals. The data used are opening price daily series for assets from different markets during a time span of around ten years. We found that the ADEV results for the return series at short scales resemble those expected for an uncorrelated series, consistent with the efficient market hypothesis. On the other hand, the ADEV results for absolute return series for short scales (first one or two decades) decrease following approximately a scaling relation up to a point that is different for almost each asset, after which the ADEV deviates from scaling, which suggests that the presence of clustering, long-range dependence and non-stationarity signatures in the series drive the results for large observation intervals.     

Intra-group and inter-group trading differentiation analysis: A new approach for detecting the effect of trading volume on stock market fluctuations

Analyzing statistical properties of stock market data using statistical physics has received much attention from physicists and economists in recent years. Although some statistical characteristics of stock market data such as power-low tails of stock returns have become established fact, behavior of other related variables such as trading volume are less studied. In this paper, in order to examine the impact of trading volume on statistical properties of stock market returns, different trading behavior of different traders in Tehran Stock Exchange is analyzed. We define a new coefficient which measures the equilibrium between these different forces affecting the market at any given trading day. By adjusting market returns by this coefficient, we also assessed the impact of these forces on the statistical properties of stock market returns.     

Progress in physical properties of Chinese stock markets

In the past two decades, statistical physics was brought into the field of finance, applying new methods and concepts to financial time series and developing a new interdiscipline “econophysics”. In this review, we introduce several commonly used methods for stock time series in econophysics including distribution functions, correlation functions, detrended fluctuation analysis method, detrended moving average method, and multifractal analysis. Then based on these methods, we review some statistical properties of Chinese stock markets including scaling behavior, long-term correlations, cross-correlations, leverage effects, antileverage effects, and multifractality. Last, based on an agent-based model, we develop a new option pricing model — financial market model that shows a good agreement with the prices using real Shanghai Index data. This review is helpful for people to understand and research statistical physics of financial markets.     

Volatility return intervals analysis of the Japanese market

We investigate scaling and memory effects in return intervals between price volatilities above a certain threshold q for the Japanese stock market using daily and intraday data sets. We find that the distribution of return intervals can be approximated by a scaling function that depends only on the ratio between the return interval τ and its mean 〈τ〉. We also find memory effects such that a large (or small) return interval follows a large (or small) interval by investigating the conditional distribution and mean return interval. The results are similar to previous studies of other markets and indicate that similar statistical features appear in different financial markets. We also compare our results between the period before and after the big crash at the end of 1989. We find that scaling and memory effects of the return intervals show similar features although the statistical properties of the returns are different.     

A controllable laboratory stock market for modeling real stock markets

Based on the different research approaches, econophysics can be divided into threedirections: empirical econophysics, computationaleconophysics, and experimental econophysics. Becauseempirical econophysics lacks controllability that is needed to studythe impacts of different external conditions and computational econophysicshas to adopt artificial decision-making processes that are often deviated fromthose of real humans, experimental econophysics tends to overcome theseproblems by offering controllability and using real humans in laboratory experiments.However, to our knowledge, the existing laboratory experiments have not convincinglyreappeared the stylized facts (say, scaling) that have been revealed for realeconomic/financial markets by econophysicists. A most important reason is that in theseexperiments, discrete trading time makes these laboratory markets deviated from realmarkets where trading time is naturally continuous. Here we attempt to overcome thisproblem by designing a continuous double-auction stock-trading market and conductingseveral human experiments in laboratory. As an initial work, the present artificialfinancial market can reproduce some stylized facts related to clustering and scaling.Also, it predicts some other scaling in human behavior dynamics that is hard to achieve inreal markets due to the difficulty in getting the data. Thus, it becomes possible to studyreal stock markets by conducting controlled experiments on such laboratory stock marketsproducing high frequency data.     

Difference in nature of correlation between NASDAQ and BSE indices

We apply a recently developed wavelet based approach to characterize the correlation and scaling properties of non-stationary financial time series. This approach is local in nature and it makes use of wavelets from the Daubechies family for detrending purpose. The built-in variable windows in wavelet transform makes this procedure well suited for the non-stationary data. We analyze daily price of NASDAQ composite index for a period of 20 years, and BSE sensex index, over a period of 15 years. It is found that the long-range correlation, as well as fractal behavior for both the stock index values differ from each other significantly. Strong non-statistical long-range correlation is observed in BSE index, whose removal revealed a Gaussian random noise character for the corresponding fluctuation. The NASDAQ index, on the other hand, showed a multifractal behavior with long-range statistical correlation.     

Asymmetric multifractal scaling behavior in the Chinese stock market: Based on asymmetric MF-DFA

We utilized asymmetric multifractal detrended fluctuation analysis in this study to examine the asymmetric multifractal scaling behavior of Chinese stock markets with uptrends or downtrends. Results show that the multifractality degree of Chinese stock markets with uptrends is stronger than that of Chinese stock markets with downtrends. Correlation asymmetries are more evident in large fluctuations than in small fluctuations. By discussing the source of asymmetric multifractality, we find that multifractality is related to long-range correlations when the market is going up, whereas it is related to fat-tailed distribution when the market is going down. The main source of asymmetric scaling behavior in the Shanghai stock market are long-range correlations, whereas that in the Shenzhen stock market is fat-tailed distribution. An analysis of the time-varying feature of scaling asymmetries shows that the evolution trends of these scaling asymmetries are similar in the two Chinese stock markets. Major financial and economical events may enhance scaling asymmetries.     

A Volatility Estimator of Stock Market Indices Based on the Intrinsic Entropy Model

Grasping the historical volatility of stock market indices and accurately estimating are two of the major focuses of those involved in the financial securities industry and derivative instruments pricing. This paper presents the results of employing the intrinsic entropy model as a substitute for estimating the volatility of stock market indices. Diverging from the widely used volatility models that take into account only the elements related to the traded prices, namely the open, high, low, and close prices of a trading day (OHLC), the intrinsic entropy model takes into account the traded volumes during the considered time frame as well. We adjust the intraday intrinsic entropy model that we introduced earlier for exchange-traded securities in order to connect daily OHLC prices with the ratio of the corresponding daily volume to the overall volume traded in the considered period. The intrinsic entropy model conceptualizes this ratio as entropic probability or market credence assigned to the corresponding price level. The intrinsic entropy is computed using historical daily data for traded market indices (S&P 500, Dow 30, NYSE Composite, NASDAQ Composite, Nikkei 225, and Hang Seng Index). We compare the results produced by the intrinsic entropy model with the volatility estimates obtained for the same data sets using widely employed industry volatility estimators. The intrinsic entropy model proves to consistently deliver reliable estimates for various time frames while showing peculiarly high values for the coefficient of variation, with the estimates falling in a significantly lower interval range compared with those provided by the other advanced volatility estimators.     

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.     

A reflexive toy-model for financial market

We propose a reflexive toy model for market dynamics, based on the idea that existing reflexive loops are generated by the conviction, shared by many market operators, that a certain price follows a certain model. Their trading behaviour will therefore increase the probability that the model predictions are in fact fulfilled. We analytically write the equations generating a reflexive loop stemming from a simple linear regression model, and we show that the resulting toy model yields a peculiar intermittent behavior. The presence of two unstable fixed points is apparent from our numerical calculation and the residence-time distribution density in these points asymptotically follows an inverse-power-law tail. The exponent of this tail, as well as the scaling properties of the model output, are close to those stemming from real-price time series.     

A method for detection of abrupt changes in the financial market combining wavelet decomposition and correlation graphs

The objective of this work is to propose a new methodology to detect the imminence of abrupt changes in the stock market by combining a numerical indicator based on the wavelet decomposition technique with a measure of the interdependency of the markets using graph theory. While the indicator based on wavelet decomposition is based on a single time series, an approach based on network representation can provide information on the interdependency of the various markets. More specifically, the stock market indices are associated with nodes of a network and the correlation between pairs of nodes with links. Results from the theory of graphs can then be used to indicate numerically the connectivity of this network. Experimentations with a variety of financial time series shows that the connectivity varies as trends of the financial time series varies. Combining the indicator based on the wavelet decomposition with the proposed measure of the connectivity of the network, it was possible to refine the authors previous results in terms of detecting abrupt changes in the stock market. In order to illustrate the methodology a case study involving twelve stock market indices was presented.     

Non-linear characteristics and long-range correlations in Asian stock markets

We test several non-linear characteristics of Asian stock markets, which indicates the failure of efficient market hypothesis and shows the essence of fractal of the financial markets. In addition, by using the method of detrended fluctuation analysis (DFA) to investigate the long range correlation of the volatility in the stock markets, we find that the crossover phenomena exist in the results of DFA. Further, in the region of small volatility, the scaling behavior is more complicated; in the region of large volatility, the scaling exponent is close to 0.5, which suggests the market is more efficient. All these results may indicate the possibility of characteristic multifractal scaling behaviors of the financial markets.     

Intraday volatility and network topological properties in the Korean stock market

We examine whether the relationship between market volatility and network properties in the low-frequency level can be applied to the high-frequency level. For the analysis, we use the minimum spanning tree (MST) method constructed from intraday Korean stock market data. The results show that the higher the market volatility is, the denser the MST of stocks becomes. The normalized tree length shows a strong negative relationship with market volatility, indicating that the distances between nodes are shorter when the market volatility is high. The mean occupation layer shows the tendency of having a smaller value in a higher volatility market. The maximum number of links becomes larger when the market volatility increases. All these network properties support the network being dense and shrinking in high market volatility conditions; that is, the degree of co-movement in financial market is reinforced in the intraday high-frequency level.     

Temporal evolution into a more efficient stock market

Using the price change and the log return of 10 stock market indices, we examine the temporal evolution of the time scale. The 10 stock markets had similar properties. Their log-return time series had patterns and long-range correlations until the mid-1990s. In the 2000s, however, the long-range correlations for most markets shortened, and the patterns weakened. These phenomena were due to advances in communication infrastructure such as the Internet and internet-based trading systems, which increased the speed of information dissemination. We examined the temporal evolution of the time scale in the markets by comparing the probability density function of log returns for the 2000s with that in the 1990s and by using the minimum entropy density method.