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"Frontmatter". In: Analysis of Financial Time Series

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20 FINANCIAL TIME SERIES AND THEIR CHARACTERISTICS• Compute the sample mean, variance, skewness, excess kurtosis, minimum, andmaximum <strong>of</strong> the daily log returns.• Transform the log returns into simple returns. Compute the sample mean, variance,skewness, excess kurtosis, and minimum and maximum <strong>of</strong> the daily simplereturns.• Are the sample means <strong>of</strong> log returns statistically different from zero? Use the5% significance level to draw your conclusion and discuss their practical implications.2. Consider the monthly stock returns <strong>of</strong> Alcoa (aa), General Motors (gm), Walt Disney(dis), and Hershey Foods (hsy) from January 1962 to December 1999 for 456observations and those <strong>of</strong> American Express (axp) and Mellon <strong>Financial</strong> Corporation(mel) from January 1973 to December 1999 for 324 observations. Again,you may obtain the data directly from CRSP or from the files on the Web. Ticksymbols and years involved are used to create file names (e.g., “m-mel7399.dat”contains the monthly log returns, in percentage, <strong>of</strong> Mellon <strong>Financial</strong> Corporationstock from January 1973 to December 1999).• Compute the sample mean, variance, skewness, excess kurtosis, and minimumand maximum <strong>of</strong> the monthly log returns.• Transform the log returns into simple returns. Compute the sample mean, variance,skewness, excess kurtosis, and minimum and maximum <strong>of</strong> the monthlysimple returns.• Are the sample means <strong>of</strong> log returns statistically different from zero? Use the5% significance level to draw your conclusion and discuss their practical implications.3. Focus on the monthly stock returns <strong>of</strong> Alcoa from 1962 to 1999.• What is the average annual log return over the data span?• What is the annualized (average) simple return over the data span?• Consider an investment that invested one dollar on the Alcoa stock at the beginning<strong>of</strong> 1962. What was the value <strong>of</strong> the investment at the end <strong>of</strong> 1999? Assumethat there were no transaction costs.4. Repeat the same analysis as the prior problem for the monthly stock returns <strong>of</strong>American Express.5. Obtain the histograms <strong>of</strong> daily simple and log returns <strong>of</strong> American Express stockfrom January 1990 to December 1999. Compare them with normal distributionsthat have the same mean and standard deviation.6. Daily foreign exchange rates can be obtained from the Federal Reserve Bank <strong>of</strong>Chicago. The data are the noon buying rates in New York City certified by the

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