SEM217: Jordan Lekeufack, UC Berkeley: Volatility is (Mostly) Path-Dependent

Tuesday, March 7th @ 11:00-12:30 PM

We learn from data that volatility is mostly path-dependent: up to 90% of the variance of the implied volatility of equity indexes is explained endogenously by past index returns, and up to 65% for (noisy estimates of) future daily realized volatility. The path-dependency that we uncover is remarkably simple: a linear combination of a weighted sum of past daily returns and the square root of a weighted sum of past daily squared returns with different time-shifted power-law weights capturing both short and long memory. This simple model, which is homogeneous in volatility, is shown to consistently outperform existing models across equity indexes and train/test sets for both implied and realized volatility. It suggests a simple continuous-time path-dependent volatility (PDV) model that may be fed historical or risk-neutral parameters. The weights can be approximated by superpositions of exponential kernels to produce Markovian models. In particular, we propose a 4-factor Markovian PDV model which captures all the important stylized facts of volatility, produces very realistic price and volatility paths, and jointly fits SPX and VIX smiles remarkably well. We thus show that a continuous-time Markovian parametric stochastic volatility (actually, PDV) model can practically solve the joint SPX/VIX smile calibration problem.

Slides