This paper introduces a no-arbitrage framework to assess how macroeconomic factors help explain the risk-premium agents require to bear the risk of fluctuations in stock market volatility. We develop a model in which return volatility is stochastic and derive no-arbitrage conditions linking volatility to macroeconomic factors. We estimate the model using data related to variance swaps, which ar...

Consistent with findings in other markets, implied volatility is a biased predictor of the realized volatility of gold futures. No existing explanation—including a price of volatility risk— can completely explain the bias, but much of this apparent bias can be explained by persistence and estimation error in implied volatility. Statistical criteria reject the hypothesis that implied volatility ...

High frequency data are often used to construct proxies for the daily volatility in discrete time volatility models. This paper introduces a calculus for such proxies, making it possible to compare and optimize them. The two distinguishing features of the approach are (1) a simple continuous time extension of discrete time volatility models and (2) an abstract definition of volatility proxy. Th...

We study the impact of volatility on intraday serial correlation, at time scales of less than 20 minutes, exploiting a data set with all transaction on SPX500 futures from 1993 to 2001. We show that, while realized volatility and intraday serial correlation are linked, this relation is driven by unexpected volatility only, that is by the fraction of volatility which cannot be forecasted. The im...

The aim of this paper is to price an American style option when there is uncertainty on the volatility of the underlying asset. An option contract can be either European or American style depending on whether the exercise is possible only at or also before the expiry date. A European option gives the holder the right to buy or sell the underlying asset only at the expiry date of the option. On ...

We propose robust numerical algorithms for pricing discrete variance options and volatility swaps under general time-changed Lévy processes. Since analytic pricing formulas of these derivatives are not available, some of the earlier pricing methods use the quadratic variation approximation for the discrete realized variance. While this approximation works quite well for long-maturity options on...

With the availability of high frequency financial data, nonparametric estimation of volatility of an asset return process becomes feasible. A major problem is how to estimate the volatility consistently and efficiently, when the observed asset returns contain error or noise, for example, in the form of microstructure noise. The former (consistency) has been addressed heavily in the recent liter...

We propose a multi-scale stochastic volatility model in which a fast mean-reverting factor of volatility is built on top of the Heston stochastic volatility model. A singular pertubative expansion is then used to obtain an approximation for European option prices. The resulting pricing formulas are semi-analytic, in the sense that they can be expressed as integrals. Difficulties associated with...