A Comprehensive Look at Financial Volatility Prediction by Economic Variables

What drives volatility on financial markets? This paper takes a comprehensive look at the predictability of financial market volatility by macroeconomic and financial variables. We go beyond forecasting stock market volatility (by large the focus in previous studies) and additionally investigate the predictability of foreign exchange, bond, and commodity volatility by means of a data-rich modeling methodology which is able to handle a potentially large number of predictor variables. In line with previous research, we find relatively little economically meaningful predictability of stock market volatility. By contrast, volatility in foreign exchange, bond, and commodity markets appears predictable by macro and financial predictors both in-sample and out-of-sample.