Volatility of an Indian stock market : A random matrix approach

We examine volatility of an Indian stock market in terms of aspects like participation, synchronization of stocks and quantification of volatility using the random matrix approach. Volatility pattern of the market is found using the BSE index for the three-year period 2000-2002. Random matrix analysis is carried out using daily returns of 70 stocks for several time windows of 85 days in 2001 to (i) do a brief comparative analysis with statistics of eigenvalues and eigenvectors of the matrix C of correlations between price fluctuations, in time regimes of different volatilities. While a bulk of eigenvalues falls within RMT bounds in all the time periods, we see that the largest (deviating) eigenvalue correlates well with the volatility of the index, the corresponding eigenvector clearly shows a shift in the distribution of its components from volatile to less volatile periods and verifies the qualitative association between participation and volatility (ii) observe that the Inverse participation ratio for the last eigenvector is sensitive to market fluctuations (the two quantities are observed to anti correlate significantly) (iii) set up a variability index, V whose temporal evolution is found to be significantly correlated with the volatility of the overall market index.