Scaling and correlation in financial data

Rama Cont

Published 1997-05-08, updated 1997-05-28Version 3

The statistical properties of the increments x(t+T) - x(t) of a financial time series depend on the time resolution T on which the increments are considered. A non-parametric approach is used to study the scale dependence of the empirical distribution of the price increments x(t+T) - x(t) of S&P Index futures, for time scales T, ranging from a few minutes to a few days using high-frequency price data. We show that while the variance increases linearly with the timescale, the kurtosis exhibits anomalous scaling properties, indicating a departure from the iid hypothesis. Study of the dependence structure of the increments shows that although the autocorrelation function decays rapidly to zero in a few minutes, the correlation of their squares exhibits a slow power law decay with exponent 0.37, indicating persistence in the scale of fluctuations. We establish a link between the scaling behavior and the dependence structure of the increments : in particular, the anomalous scaling of kurtosis may be explained by "long memory" properties of the square of the increments.