We study the statistical properties of volatility---a measure of how much the market is likely to fluctuate. We estimate the volatility by the local average of the absolute price changes. We analyze (a) the S&P 500 stock index for the 13-year period Jan 1984 to Dec 1996 and (b) the market...

We study the volatility of the S&P500 stock index from 1984 to 1996 and find that the volatility distribution can be very well described by a log-normal function. Further, using detrended fluctuation analysis we show that the volatility is power-law correlated with Hurst exponent $\alpha\cong0.9$.

We study the distribution of fluctuations over a time scale $\Delta t$ (i.e., the returns) of the S&P 500 index by analyzing three distinct databases. Database (i) contains approximately 1 million records sampled at 1 min intervals for the 13-year period 1984-1996, database (ii) contains 8686...

We analyze the fluctuations in the gross domestic product (GDP) of 152 countries for the period 1950--1992. We find that (i) the distribution of annual growth rates for countries of a given GDP decays with ``fatter'' tails than for a Gaussian, and (ii) the width of the distribution scales as a...

It is commonly believed that the correlations between stock returns increase in high volatility periods. We investigate how much of these correlations can be explained within a simple non-Gaussian one-factor description with time independent correlations. Using surrogate data with the true...

The probability distribution of stock price changes is studied by analyzing a database (the Trades and Quotes Database) documenting every trade for all stocks in three major US stock markets, for the two year period Jan 1994 -- Dec 1995. A sample of 40 million data points is extracted, which is...

Financial networks are dynamic. To assess their systemic importance to the world-wide economic network and avert losses we need models that take the time variations of the links and nodes into account. Using the methodology of classical mechanics and Laplacian determinism we develop a model that...

When common factors strongly influence two power-law cross-correlated time series recorded in complex natural or social systems, using classic detrended cross-correlation analysis (DCCA) without considering these common factors will bias the results. We use detrended partial cross-correlation...

Housing markets play a crucial role in economies and the collapse of a real-estate bubble usually destabilizes the financial system and causes economic recessions. We investigate the systemic risk and spatiotemporal dynamics of the US housing market (1975-2011) at the state level based on the...

According to the leading models in modern finance, the presence of intraday lead-lag relationships between financial assets is negligible in efficient markets. With the advance of technology, however, markets have become more sophisticated. To determine whether this has resulted in an improved...