Forecasting Volatility of Stocks Return: A Smooth Transition Combining Forecasts

This paper empirically explores the predicting ability of the newly proposed smooth transition (ST) time-varying combining forecast methods. The proposed method allows the "weight" of combining forecasts to change gradually over time through its unique feature of transition variables. Stock market returns from 7 countries were applied to Ad Hoc models, the well-known Generalized Autoregressive Conditional Heteroskedasticity (GARCH) family models, and the Smooth Transition Exponential Smoothing (STES) models. Of the individual models, GJRGARCH and STES-E&AE emerged as the best models and thereby were chosen for constructing the combined forecast models where a total of nine ST combining methods were developed. The robustness of the ST combining forecasts is also validated by the Diebold-Mariano (DM) test. The post-sample forecasting performance shows that ST combining forecast methods outperformed all the individual models and fixed weight combining models. This study contributes in two ways: 1) the ST combining methods statistically outperformed all the individual forecast methods and the existing traditional combining methods using simple averaging and Bates & Granger method. 2) trading volume as a transition variable in ST methods was superior to other individual models as well as the ST models with single sign or size of past shocks as transition variables.