Empirical evidence on the importance of aggregation, asymmetry, and jumps for volatility prediction

Many recent modelling advances in finance topics ranging from the pricing of volatility-based derivative products to asset management are predicated on the importance of jumps, or discontinuous movements in asset returns. In light of this, a number of recent papers have addressed volatility predictability, some from the perspective of the usefulness of jumps in forecasting volatility. Key papers in this area include Andersen, Bollerslev, Diebold and Labys (2003), Corsi (2004), Andersen, Bollerslev and Diebold (2007), Corsi, Pirino and Reno (2008), Barndorff, Kinnebrock, and Shephard (2010), Patton and Shephard (2011), and the references cited therein. In this paper, we review the extant literature and then present new empirical evidence on the predictive content of realized measures of jump power variations (including upside and downside risk, jump asymmetry, and truncated jump variables), constructed using instantaneous returns, i.e.,