Assessing symmetry of financial returns series

Testing symmetry of a probability distribution is a common question arising from applications in several fields. Particularly, in the study of observables used in the analysis of stock market index variations, the question of symmetry has not been fully investigated by means of statistical procedures. In this work a distribution-free test statistic T_n for testing symmetry, derived by Einmahl and McKeague, based on the empirical likelihood approach, is used to address the study of symmetry of financial returns. The asymptotic points of the test statistic T_n are also calculated and a procedure for assessing symmetry for the analysis of the returns of stock market indices is presented.