No Arabic abstract
Many fits of Hawkes processes to financial data look rather good but most of them are not statistically significant. This raises the question of what part of market dynamics this model is able to account for exactly. We document the accuracy of such processes as one varies the time interval of calibration and compare the performance of various types of kernels made up of sums of exponentials. Because of their around-the-clock opening times, FX markets are ideally suited to our aim as they allow us to avoid the complications of the long daily overnight closures of equity markets. One can achieve statistical significance according to three simultaneous tests provided that one uses kernels with two exponentials for fitting an hour at a time, and two or three exponentials for full days, while longer periods could not be fitted within statistical satisfaction because of the non-stationarity of the endogenous process. Fitted timescales are relatively short and endogeneity factor is high but sub-critical at about 0.8.
We test three common information criteria (IC) for selecting the order of a Hawkes process with an intensity kernel that can be expressed as a mixture of exponential terms. These processes find application in high-frequency financial data modelling. The information criteria are Akaikes information criterion (AIC), the Bayesian information criterion (BIC) and the Hannan-Quinn criterion (HQ). Since we work with simulated data, we are able to measure the performance of model selection by the success rate of the IC in selecting the model that was used to generate the data. In particular, we are interested in the relation between correct model selection and underlying sample size. The analysis includes realistic sample sizes and parameter sets from recent literature where parameters were estimated using empirical financial intra-day data. We compare our results to theoretical predictions and similar empirical findings on the asymptotic distribution of model selection for consistent and inconsistent IC.
Given a stationary point process, an intensity burst is defined as a short time period during which the number of counts is larger than the typical count rate. It might signal a local non-stationarity or the presence of an external perturbation to the system. In this paper we propose a novel procedure for the detection of intensity bursts within the Hawkes process framework. By using a model selection scheme we show that our procedure can be used to detect intensity bursts when both their occurrence time and their total number is unknown. Moreover, the initial time of the burst can be determined with a precision given by the typical inter-event time. We apply our methodology to the mid-price change in FX markets showing that these bursts are frequent and that only a relatively small fraction is associated to news arrival. We show lead-lag relations in intensity burst occurrence across different FX rates and we discuss their relation with price jumps.
We show that univariate and symmetric multivariate Hawkes processes are only weakly causal: the true log-likelihoods of real and reversed event time vectors are almost equal, thus parameter estimation via maximum likelihood only weakly depends on the direction of the arrow of time. In ideal (synthetic) conditions, tests of goodness of parametric fit unambiguously reject backward event times, which implies that inferring kernels from time-symmetric quantities, such as the autocovariance of the event rate, only rarely produce statistically significant fits. Finally, we find that fitting financial data with many-parameter kernels may yield significant fits for both arrows of time for the same event time vector, sometimes favouring the backward time direction. This goes to show that a significant fit of Hawkes processes to real data with flexible kernels does not imply a definite arrow of time unless one tests it.
This paper has been withdrawn by the authors.
In this study, we have investigated factors of determination which can affect the connected structure of a stock network. The representative index for topological properties of a stock network is the number of links with other stocks. We used the multi-factor model, extensively acknowledged in financial literature. In the multi-factor model, common factors act as independent variables while returns of individual stocks act as dependent variables. We calculated the coefficient of determination, which represents the measurement value of the degree in which dependent variables are explained by independent variables. Therefore, we investigated the relationship between the number of links in the stock network and the coefficient of determination in the multi-factor model. We used individual stocks traded on the market indices of Korea, Japan, Canada, Italy and the UK. The results are as follows. We found that the mean coefficient of determination of stocks with a large number of links have higher values than those with a small number of links with other stocks. These results suggest that common factors are significantly deterministic factors to be taken into account when making a stock network. Furthermore, stocks with a large number of links to other stocks can be more affected by common factors.