Abstract not found

Using a new dataset consisting of six years of real-time exchange rate quotations, macroeconomic expectations, and macroeconomic realizations (announcements), we characterize the conditional means of U.S. dollar spot exchange rates versus German Mark, British Pound, Japanese Yen, Swiss Franc, and the Euro. In particular, we find that announcement surprises (that is, divergences between expectations and realizations, or "news") produce conditional mean jumps; hence high-frequency exchange rate dynamics are linked to fundamentals. The details of the linkage are intriguing and include announcement timing and sign effects. The sign effect refers to the fact that the market reacts to news in an asymmetric fashion: bad news has greater impact than good news, which we relate to recent theoretical work on information processing and price discovery. Key Words: Exchange Rates; Macroeconomic News Announcements; Jumps; Market Microstructure; High-Frequency Data; Expectations Data; Anticipations Data; Order Flow; Asset Return Volatility; Forecasting.

A rapidly growing literature has documented important improvements in financial return volatility measurement and forecasting via use of realized variation measures constructed from high-frequency returns coupled with simple modeling procedures. Building on recent theoretical results in Barndorff-Nielsen and Shephard (2004a, 2005) for related bi-power variation measures, the present paper provides a practical and robust framework for non-parametrically measuring the jump component in asset return volatility. In an application to the DM/ $ exchange rate, the S&P500 market index, and the 30-year U.S. Treasury bond yield, we find that jumps are both highly prevalent and distinctly less persistent than the continuous sample path variation process. Moreover, many jumps appear directly associated with specific macroeconomic news announcements. Separating jump from non-jump movements in a simple but sophisticated volatility forecasting model, we find that almost all of the predictability in daily, weekly, and monthly return volatilities comes from the non-jump component. Our results thus set the stage for a number of interesting future econometric developments and important financial applications by separately modeling, forecasting, and pricing the continuous and jump components of the total return variation process.

We examine tests for jumps based on recent asymptotic results; we interpret the tests as Hausman-type tests. Monte Carlo evidence suggests that the daily ratio z-statistic has appropriate size, good power, and good jump detection capabilities revealed by the confusion matrix comprised of jump classification probabilities. We identify a pitfall in applying the asymptotic approximation over an entire sample. Theoretical and Monte Carlo analysis indicates that microstructure noise biases the tests against detecting jumps, and that a simple lagging strategy corrects the bias. Empirical work documents evidence for jumps that account for 7% of stock market price variance.

In theory, the sum of squares of log returns sampled at high frequency estimates their variance. When market microstructure noise is present but unaccounted for, however, we show that the optimal sampling frequency is finite and derives its closed-form expression. But even with optimal sampling, using say 5-min returns when transactions are recorded every second, a vast amount of data is discarded, in contradiction to basic statistical principles. We demonstrate that modeling the noise and using all the data is a better solution, even if one misspecifies the noise distribution. So the answer is: sample as often as possible. Over the past few years, price data sampled at very high frequency have become increasingly available in the form of the Olsen dataset of currency exchange rates or the TAQ database of NYSE stocks. If such data were not affected by market microstructure noise, the realized volatility of the process (i.e., the average sum of squares of log-returns sampled at high frequency) would estimate the returns ’ variance, as is well known. In fact, sampling as often as possible would theoretically produce in the limit a perfect estimate of that variance. We start by asking whether it remains optimal to sample the price process at very high frequency in the presence of market microstructure noise, consistently with the basic statistical principle that, ceteris paribus, more data are preferred to less. We first show that, if noise is present but unaccounted for, then the optimal sampling frequency is finite, and we We are grateful for comments and suggestions from the editor, Maureen O’Hara, and two anonymous

Abstract not found

We consider various MIDAS (Mixed Data Sampling) regression models to predict volatility. The models differ in the specification of regressors (squared returns, absolute returns, realized volatility, realized power, and return ranges), in the use of daily or intra-daily (5-minute) data, and in the length of the past history included in the forecasts. The MIDAS framework allows us to compare models across all these dimensions in a very tightly parameterized fashion. Using equity return data, we find that daily realized power (involving 5-minute absolute returns) is the best predictor of future volatility (measured by increments in quadratic variation) and outperforms model based on realized volatility (i.e. past increments in quadratic variation). Surprisingly, the direct use of high-frequency (5-minute) data does not improve volatility predictions. Finally, daily lags of one to two months are sufficient to capture the persistence in volatility. These findings hold both in- and out-of-sample.

In this paper, we provide both qualitative and quantitative measures of the precision of measuring integrated volatility by realized volatility for a fixed frequency of observation. We start by characterizing for a general diffusion the dierence between realized and integrated volatility for a given frequency of observation. Then we compute the mean and variance of this noise and the correlation between the noise and the integrated volatility in the Eigenfunction Stochastic Volatility model of Meddahi (2001a). This model has as special cases log-normal, affine and GARCH diusion models. Using previous empirical results, we show that the noise is substantial compared with the unconditional mean and variance of integrated volatility, even if one employs five-minute returns. We also propose a simple approach to capture the information about integrated volatility contained in the returns through the leverage eect. We show that in practice, the leverage effect does not matter.

There are two variance components embedded in the returns constructed using high frequency asset prices: the time-varying variance of the unobservable efficient returns that would prevail in a frictionless economy and the variance of the equally unobservable microstructure noise. Using sample moments of high frequency return data recorded at different frequencies, we provide a simple and robust technique to identify both variance components. In the context of a volatility-timing trading strategy, we show that careful (optimal) separation of the two volatility components of the observed stock returns yields substantial utility gains.

This paper surveys research on computational agent-based models used in finance. It will concentrate on models where the use of computational tools is critical in the process of crafting models which give insights into the importance and dynamics of investor heterogeneity in many financial settings.