Bayesian semiparametric Markov switching stochastic volatility model

This paper proposes a novel Bayesian semiparametric stochastic volatility model with Markov switching regimes for modeling the dynamics of the financial returns. The distribution of the error term of the returns is modeled as an infinite mixture of Normals; meanwhile, the intercept of the volatility equation is allowed to switch between two regimes. The proposed model is estimated using a novel sequential Monte Carlo method called particle learning that is especially well suited for state‐space models. The model is tested on simulated data and, using real financial times series, compared to a model without the Markov switching regimes. The results show that including a Markov switching specification provides higher predictive power for the entire distribution, as well as in the tails of the distribution. Finally, the estimate of the persistence parameter decreases significantly, a finding consistent with previous empirical studies.     

GARCH option pricing: A semiparametric approach

Option pricing based on GARCH models is typically obtained under the assumption that the random innovations are standard normal (normal GARCH models). However, these models fail to capture the skewness and the leptokurtosis in financial data. We propose a new method to compute option prices using a nonparametric density estimator for the distribution of the driving noise. We investigate the pricing performances of this approach using two different risk neutral measures: the Esscher transform pioneered by Gerber and Shiu [Gerber, H.U., Shiu, E.S.W., 1994a. Option pricing by Esscher transforms (with discussions). Trans. Soc. Actuar. 46, 99–91], and the extended Girsanov principle introduced by Elliot and Madan [Elliot, R.J., Madan, D.G., 1998. A discrete time equivalent martingale 9 measure. Math. Finance 8, 127–152]. Both measures are justified by economic arguments and are consistent with Duan’s [Duan, J.-C., 1995. The GARCH option pricing model. Math. Finance 5, 13–32] local risk neutral valuation relationship (LRNVR) for normal GARCH models. The main advantage of the two measures is that one can price derivatives using skewed or heavier tailed innovations distributions to model the returns. An empirical study regarding the European Call option valuation on S&P500 Index shows: (i) under both risk neutral measures our semiparametric algorithm performs better than the existing normal GARCH models if we allow for a leverage effect and (ii) the pricing errors when using the Esscher transform are quite small even though our estimation procedure is based only on historical return data.     

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.     

Model selection of a switching mechanism for financial time series

The threshold autoregressive model with generalized autoregressive conditionally heteroskedastic (GARCH) specification is a popular nonlinear model that captures the well‐known asymmetric phenomena in financial market data. The switching mechanisms of hysteretic autoregressive GARCH models are different from threshold autoregressive model with GARCH as regime switching may be delayed when the hysteresis variable lies in a hysteresis zone. This paper conducts a Bayesian model comparison among competing models by designing an adaptive Markov chain Monte Carlo sampling scheme. We illustrate the performance of three kinds of criteria by comparing models with fat‐tailed and/or skewed errors: deviance information criteria, Bayesian predictive information, and an asymptotic version of Bayesian predictive information. A simulation study highlights the properties of the three Bayesian criteria and the accuracy as well as their favorable performance as model selection tools. We demonstrate the proposed method in an empirical study of 12 international stock markets, providing evidence to strongly support for both models with skew fat‐tailed innovations. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

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.     

The Stochastically Subordinated Poisson Normal Process for Modelling Financial Assets

The method of stochastic subordination, or random time indexing, has been recently applied to Wiener process price processes to model financial returns. Previous emphasis in stochastic subordination models has involved explicitly identifying the subordinating process with an observable quantity such as number of trades. In contrast, the approach taken here does not depend on the specific identification of the subordinated time variable, but rather assumes a class of time models and estimates parameters from data. In addition, a simple Markov process is proposed for the characteristic parameter of the subordinating distribution to explain the significant autocorrelation of the squared returns. It is shown, in particular, that the proposed model, while containing only a few more parameters than the commonly used Wiener process models, fits selected financial time series particularly well, characterising the autocorrelation structure and heavy tails, as well as preserving the desirable self-similarity structure, and the existence of risk-neutral measures necessary for objective derivative valuation. Also, it will be shown that the model proposed fits financial times series data better than the popular generalised autoregressive conditional heteroscedasticity (GARCH) models. Additionally, this paper will develop a skew model by replacing the normal variates with Lévy stable variates.     

Simulated likelihood inference for stochastic volatility models using continuous particle filtering

Discrete-time stochastic volatility (SV) models have generated a considerable literature in financial econometrics. However, carrying out inference for these models is a difficult task and often relies on carefully customized Markov chain Monte Carlo techniques. Our contribution here is twofold. First, we propose a new SV model, namely SV–GARCH, which bridges the gap between SV and GARCH models: it has the attractive feature of inheriting unconditional properties similar to the standard GARCH model but being conditionally heavier tailed. Second, we propose a likelihood-based inference technique for a large class of SV models relying on the recently introduced continuous particle filter. The approach is robust and simple to implement. The technique is applied to daily returns data for S&P 500 and Dow Jones stock price indices for various spans.     

半参数门限广义非对称随机波动模型研究

为了能够同时刻画和描述金融资产收益序列的偏态、厚尾以及序列的门限效应、非对称杠杆效应等特性,提出把门限广义非对称随机波动模型与非参数Dirichlet过程混合模型有机结合,构建了半参数门限广义非对称随机波动模型,并对模型进行了贝叶斯分析.实证研究中,利用上海黄金价格收益率序列数据进行建模分析,结果表明:半参数门限广义非对称随机波动模型能够有效地刻画上海黄金价格收益率序列波动率的动态特征.     

Bayesian tail‐risk forecasting using realized GARCH

A realized generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedastic (GARCH) model is developed within a Bayesian framework for the purpose of forecasting value at risk and conditional value at risk. Student‐t and skewed‐t return distributions are combined with Gaussian and student‐t distributions in the measurement equation to forecast tail risk in eight international equity index markets over a 4‐year period. Three realized measures are considered within this framework. A Bayesian estimator is developed that compares favourably, in simulations, with maximum likelihood, both in estimation and forecasting. The realized GARCH models show a marked improvement compared with ordinary GARCH for both value‐at‐risk and conditional value‐at‐risk forecasting. This improvement is consistent across a variety of data and choice of distributions. Realized GARCH models incorporating a skewed student‐t distribution for returns are favoured overall, with the choice of measurement equation error distribution and realized measure being of lesser importance. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Quantile forecasting based on a bivariate hysteretic autoregressive model with GARCH errors and time ‐varying correlations

To understand and predict chronological dependence in the second‐order moments of asset returns, this paper considers a multivariate hysteretic autoregressive (HAR) model with generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity (GARCH) specification and time‐varying correlations, by providing a new method to describe a nonlinear dynamic structure of the target time series. The hysteresis variable governs the nonlinear dynamics of the proposed model in which the regime switch can be delayed if the hysteresis variable lies in a hysteresis zone. The proposed setup combines three useful model components for modeling economic and financial data: (1) the multivariate HAR model, (2) the multivariate hysteretic volatility models, and (3) a dynamic conditional correlation structure. This research further incorporates an adapted multivariate Student t innovation based on a scale mixture normal presentation in the HAR model to tolerate for dependence and different shaped innovation components. This study carries out bivariate volatilities, Value at Risk, and marginal expected shortfall based on a Bayesian sampling scheme through adaptive Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods, thus allowing to statistically estimate all unknown model parameters and forecasts simultaneously. Lastly, the proposed methods herein employ both simulated and real examples that help to jointly measure for industry downside tail risk.     

纵向数据下半参数联合均值协方差模型的贝叶斯分析

基于改进的Cholesky分解,研究分析了纵向数据下半参数联合均值协方差模型的贝叶斯估计和贝叶斯统计诊断,其中非参数部分采用B样条逼近.主要通过应用Gibbs抽样和Metropolis-Hastings算法相结合的混合算法获得模型中未知参数的贝叶斯估计和贝叶斯数据删除影响诊断统计量.并利用诊断统计量的大小来识别数据的异常点.模拟研究和实例分析都表明提出的贝叶斯估计和诊断方法是可行有效的.     

带有不可忽略缺失数据的半参数再生散度模型的贝叶斯分析

半参数再生散度模型是再生散度模型和半参数回归模型的推广,包括了半参数广义线性模型和广义部分线性模型等特殊类型.讨论的是该模型在响应变量和协变量均存在非随机缺失数据情形下参数的Bayes估计和基于Bayes因子的模型选择问题.在分析中,采用了惩罚样条来估计模型中的非参数成分,并建立了Bayes层次模型;为了解决Gibbs抽样过程中因参数高度相关带来的混合性差以及因维数增加导致出现不稳定性的问题,引入了潜变量做为添加数据并应用了压缩Gibbs抽样方法,改进了收敛性;同时,为了避免计算多重积分,利用了M-H算法估计边缘密度函数后计算Bayes因子,为模型的选择比较提供了一种准则.最后,通过模拟和实例验证了所给方法的有效性.     

Local non-stationarity test in mean for Markov switching GARCH models: an approximate Bayesian approach

In order to exploit mean-reverting behavior among the price differential between two markets, one can use unit root tests to determine which pairs of assets appear to exhibit mean-reverting behavior. Since nonlinear mean reversion shares the same meaning as local stationarity, this paper proposes a Bayesian hypothesis testing to detect the presence of a local unit root in the mean equation using Markov switching GARCH models. This model incorporates a fat-tailed error distribution to analyze asymmetric effects on both the conditional mean and conditional volatility of financial time series. To implement the test, we propose a numerical approximation of the marginal likelihoods to posterior odds by using an adaptive Markov Chain Monte Carlo scheme. Our simulation study demonstrates that the approximate Bayesian test performs properly. The proposed method utilizes the daily basis between the FTSE 100 Index and Index Futures as an illustration.     

Semiparametric Bayesian measurement error modeling

This work presents a Bayesian semiparametric approach for dealing with regression models where the covariate is measured with error. Given that (1) the error normality assumption is very restrictive, and (2) assuming a specific elliptical distribution for errors (Student-t for example), may be somewhat presumptuous; there is need for more flexible methods, in terms of assuming only symmetry of errors (admitting unknown kurtosis). In this sense, the main advantage of this extended Bayesian approach is the possibility of considering generalizations of the elliptical family of models by using Dirichlet process priors in dependent and independent situations. Conditional posterior distributions are implemented, allowing the use of Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC), to generate the posterior distributions. An interesting result shown is that the Dirichlet process prior is not updated in the case of the dependent elliptical model. Furthermore, an analysis of a real data set is reported to illustrate the usefulness of our approach, in dealing with outliers. Finally, semiparametric proposed models and parametric normal model are compared, graphically with the posterior distribution density of the coefficients.     

Periodic autoregressive stochastic volatility

This paper proposes a stochastic volatility model (PAR-SV) in which the log-volatility follows a first-order periodic autoregression. This model aims at representing time series with volatility displaying a stochastic periodic dynamic structure, and may then be seen as an alternative to the familiar periodic GARCH process. The probabilistic structure of the proposed PAR-SV model such as periodic stationarity and autocovariance structure are first studied. Then, parameter estimation is examined through the quasi-maximum likelihood (QML) method where the likelihood is evaluated using the prediction error decomposition approach and Kalman filtering. In addition, a Bayesian MCMC method is also considered, where the posteriors are given from conjugate priors using the Gibbs sampler in which the augmented volatilities are sampled from the Griddy Gibbs technique in a single-move way. As a-by-product, period selection for the PAR-SV is carried out using the (conditional) deviance information criterion (DIC). A simulation study is undertaken to assess the performances of the QML and Bayesian Griddy Gibbs estimates in finite samples while applications of Bayesian PAR-SV modeling to daily, quarterly and monthly S&P 500 returns are considered.     

Modified Schwarz and Hannan–Quinn information criteria for weak VARMA models

Numerous multivariate time series admit weak vector autoregressive moving-average (VARMA) representations, in which the errors are uncorrelated but not necessarily independent nor martingale differences. These models are called weak VARMA by opposition to the standard VARMA models, also called strong VARMA models, in which the error terms are supposed to be independent and identically distributed (iid). This article considers the problem of order selection of the weak VARMA models by using the information criteria. It is shown that the use of the standard information criteria are often not justified when the iid assumption on the noise is relaxed. As a consequence, we propose the modified versions of the Schwarz or Bayesian information criterion and of the Hannan and Quinn criterion for identifying the orders of weak VARMA models. Monte Carlo experiments show that the proposed modified criteria estimate the model orders more accurately than the standard ones. An illustrative application using the squared daily returns of financial series is presented.     

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.     

Returns of Eastern European financial markets:α -stable distributions,measures of risk

The daily returns of financial market indices of nineteen Eastern European countries are modelled, linear trend or ARMA(p, q) for the levels and GARCH(p ′, q ′) for the residuals. For the non Gaussian residuals -stable distributions are proposed. Then, risk measures, like the STARR and the R-ratio are used to analyse the risk in the cases of Gaussian and -stable distribution models of the residuals. (© 2008 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)     

Estimating value at risk with semiparametric support vector quantile regression

Value at Risk (VaR) has been used as an important tool to measure the market risk under normal market. Usually the VaR of log returns is calculated by assuming a normal distribution. However, log returns are frequently found not normally distributed. This paper proposes the estimation approach of VaR using semiparametric support vector quantile regression (SSVQR) models which are functions of the one-step-ahead volatility forecast and the length of the holding period, and can be used regardless of the distribution. We find that the proposed models perform better overall than the variance-covariance and linear quantile regression approaches for return data on S&P 500, NIKEI 225 and KOSPI 200 indices.     

多元波动率模型的一些新进展

对多个资产收益率的协方差矩阵建立动态模型是一个非常重要的问题。本文就近些年来该方面研究的一些主要进展进行了综述,特别地介绍了几种基于数据降维技术发展起来的能够适用于高维情形的多元GARCH模型,另外,对于多元波动率的模型诊断与比较方法以及条件协方差矩阵的预测等方面的研究成果也作了分析。