This paper proposes a governing equation for stock market indexes that accounts for non-stationary effects. This is a linear Fokker-Planck equation (FPE) that describes the time evolution of the probability distribution function (PDF) of the price return. By applying Ito's lemma, this FPE is associated with a stochastic differential equation (SDE) that models the time evolution of the price return in a fashion different from the classical Black-Scholes equation. Both FPE and SDE equations account for a deterministic part or trend, and a stationary, stochastic part as a q-Gaussian noise. The model is validated using the S\&P500 index's data. After removing the trend from the index, we show that the detrended part is stationary by evaluating the Hurst exponent of the multifractal time series, its power spectrum, and its autocorrelation.
The properties of q-dependent cross-correlation matrices of stock market have been analyzed by using the random matrix theory and complex network. The correlation structures of the fluctuations at different magnitudes have unique properties. The cross-correlations among small fluctuations are much stronger than those among large fluctuations. The large and small fluctuations are dominated by different groups of stocks. We use complex network representation to study these q-dependent matrices and discover some new identities. By utilizing those q-dependent correlation-based networks, we are abl…
We consider a few quantities that characterize trading on a stock market in a fixed time interval: logarithmic returns, volatility, trading activity (i.e., the number of transactions), and volume traded. We search for the power-law cross-correlations among these quantities aggregated over different time units from 1 min to 10 min. Our study is based on empirical data from the American stock market consisting of tick-by-tick recordings of 31 stocks listed in Dow Jones Industrial Average during the years 2008-2011. Since all the considered quantities except the returns show strong daily patterns…
This study proposes a scheme for stationarity analysis of stock price fluctuations based on KM$_2$O-Langevin theory. Using this scheme, we classify the time-series data of stock price fluctuations into three periods: stationary, non-stationary, and intermediate. We then suggest an example of a low-risk stock trading strategy to demonstrate the usefulness of our scheme by using actual stock index data. Our strategy uses a trend-based indicator, moving averages, for stationary periods and an oscillator-based indicator, psychological lines, for non-stationary periods to make trading decisions. Fi…
Here we propose a method, based on detrended covariance which we call detrended cross-correlation analysis (DXA), to investigate power-law cross-correlations between different simultaneously-recorded time series in the presence of non-stationarity. We illustrate the method by selected examples from physics, physiology, and finance.
Order cancellation process plays a crucial role in the dynamics of price formation in order-driven stock markets and is important in the construction and validation of computational finance models. Based on the order flow data of 18 liquid stocks traded on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange in 2003, we investigate the empirical statistical properties of inter-cancellation durations in units of events defined as the waiting times between two consecutive cancellations. The inter-cancellation durations for both buy and sell orders of all the stocks favor a $q$-exponential distribution when the maximum l…
All too often measuring statistical dependencies between financial time series is reduced to a linear correlation coefficient. However this may not capture all facets of reality. We study empirical dependencies of daily stock returns by their pairwise copulas. Here we investigate particularly to which extent the non-stationarity of financial time series affects both the estimation and the modeling of empirical copulas. We estimate empirical copulas from the non-stationary, original return time series and stationary, locally normalized ones. Thereby we are able to explore the empirical dependen…
Intertrade duration of equities is an important financial measure characterizing the trading activities, which is defined as the waiting time between successive trades of an equity. Using the ultrahigh-frequency data of a liquid Chinese stock and its associated warrant, we perform a comparative investigation of the statistical properties of their intertrade duration time series. The distributions of the two equities can be better described by the shifted power-law form than the Weibull and their scaled distributions do not collapse onto a single curve. Although the intertrade durations of the …
Bid-ask spread is taken as an important measure of the financial market liquidity. In this article, we study the dynamics of the spread return and the spread volatility of four liquid stocks in the Chinese stock market, including the memory effect and the multifractal nature. By investigating the autocorrelation function and the Detrended Fluctuation Analysis (DFA), we find that the spread return is lack of long-range memory, while the spread volatility is long-range time correlated. Moreover, by applying the Multifractal Detrended Fluctuation Analysis (MF-DFA), the spread return is observed t…
We describe the impact of the intra-day activity pattern on the autocorrelation function estimator. We obtain an exact formula relating estimators of the autocorrelation functions of non-stationary process to its stationary counterpart. Hence, we proved that the day seasonality of inter-transaction times extends the memory of as well the process itself as its absolute value. That is, both processes relaxation to zero is longer.
By adopting Multifractal detrended fluctuation (MF-DFA) analysis methods, the multifractal nature is revealed in the high-frequency data of two typical indexes, the Shanghai Stock Exchange Composite 180 Index (SH180) and the Shenzhen Stock Exchange Composite Index (SZCI). The characteristics of the corresponding multifractal spectra are defined as a measurement of market volatility. It is found that there is a statistically significant relationship between the stock index returns and the spectral characteristics, which can be applied to forecast the future market return. The in-sample and out-…
When common factors strongly influence two cross-correlated time series recorded in complex natural and social systems, the results will be biased if we use multifractal detrended cross-correlation analysis (MF-DXA) without considering these common factors. Based on multifractal temporally weighted detrended cross-correlation analysis (MF-TWXDFA) proposed by our group and multifractal partial cross-correlation analysis (MF-DPXA) proposed by Qian et al., we propose a new method---multifractal temporally weighted detrended partial cross-correlation analysis (MF-TWDPCCA) to quantify intrinsic pow…
In this paper we have analyzed scaling properties of time series of stock market indices (SMIs) of developing economies of Western Balkans, and have compared the results we have obtained with the results from more developed economies. We have used three different techniques of data analysis to obtain and verify our findings: Detrended Fluctuation Analysis (DFA) method, Detrended Moving Average (DMA) method, and Wavelet Transformation (WT) analysis. We have found scaling behavior in all SMI data sets that we have analyzed. The scaling of our SMI series changes from long-range correlated to slig…
A time series that represents daily values of the WIG index (the main index of Warsaw Stock Exchange) over last 5 years is examined. Non-Gaussian features of distributions of fluctuations, namely returns, over a time scale are considered. Some general properties like exponents of the long range correlation estimated by averaged volatility and detrended fluctuations analysis (DFA) as well as exponents describing a decay of tails of the cumulative distributions are found. Closing, the Zipf analysis for the WIG index time series translated into three letter text is presented.
Detrended fluctuation analysis (DFA) is a simple but very efficient method for investigating the power-law long-term correlations of non-stationary time series, in which a detrending step is necessary to obtain the local fluctuations at different timescales. We propose to determine the local trends through empirical mode decomposition (EMD) and perform the detrending operation by removing the EMD-based local trends, which gives an EMD-based DFA method. Similarly, we also propose a modified multifractal DFA algorithm, called an EMD-based MFDFA. The performance of the EMD-based DFA and MFDFA met…
We study dynamical behavior of the Chinese stock markets by investigating the statistical properties of daily ensemble returns and varieties defined respectively as the mean and the standard deviation of the ensemble daily price returns of a portfolio of stocks traded in China's stock markets on a given day. The distribution of the daily ensemble returns has an exponential form in the center and power-law tails, while the variety distribution is log-Gaussian in the bulk followed by a power-law tail for large varieties. Based on detrended fluctuation analysis, R/S analysis and modified R/S anal…
It is well known that there exist statistical and structural differences between the stock markets of developed and emerging countries. In this work, we present an analysis of the variations and autocorrelations of the Mexican Stock Market index (IPC) for different periods of its historical daily data, showing evidence that the Mexican Stock Market has been increasing its efficiency in recent times. We have analyzed the returns autocorrelation function (ACF) and used detrended fluctuation analysis (DFA) methods. We also analyze the volatility of the IPC and the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJ…
We perform return interval analysis of 1-min {\em{realized volatility}} defined by the sum of absolute high-frequency intraday returns for the Shanghai Stock Exchange Composite Index (SSEC) and 22 constituent stocks of SSEC. The scaling behavior and memory effect of the return intervals between successive realized volatilities above a certain threshold $q$ are carefully investigated. In comparison with the volatility defined by the closest tick prices to the minute marks, the return interval distribution for the realized volatility shows a better scaling behavior since 20 stocks (out of 22 sto…
The paper tackles the problem of deriving a topological structure among stock prices from high frequency historical values. Similar studies using low frequency data have already provided valuable insights. However, in those cases data need to be collected for a longer period and then they have to be detrended. An effective technique based on averaging a metric function on short subperiods of the observation horizon is suggested. Since a standard correlation-based metric is not capable of catching dependencies at different time instants, it is not expected to perform the best when dealing with …
The inverse statistics is the distribution of waiting times needed to achieve a predefined level of return obtained from (detrended) historic asset prices \cite{optihori,gainloss}. Such a distribution typically goes through a maximum at a time coined the {\em optimal investment horizon}, $τ^*_ρ$, which defines the most likely waiting time for obtaining a given return $ρ$. By considering equal positive and negative levels of return, we reported in \cite{gainloss} on a quantitative gain/loss asymmetry most pronounced for short horizons. In the present paper, the inverse statistics for 2/3 of the…
We study the volatility of the MIB30-stock-index high-frequency data from November 28, 1994 through September 15, 1995. Our aim is to empirically characterize the volatility random walk in the framework of continuous-time finance. To this end, we compute the index volatility by means of the log-return standard deviation. We choose an hourly time window in order to investigate intraday properties of volatility. A periodic component is found for the hourly time window, in agreement with previous observations. Fluctuations are studied by means of detrended fluctuation analysis, and we detect long…
An average instantaneous cross-correlation function is introduced to quantify the interaction of the financial market of a specific time. Based on the daily data of the American and Chinese stock markets, memory effect of the average instantaneous cross-correlations is investigated over different price return time intervals. Long-range time-correlations are revealed, and are found to persist up to a month-order magnitude of the price return time interval. Multifractal nature is investigated by a multifractal detrended fluctuation analysis.
We investigate statistical properties of daily international market indices of seven countries, and high-frequency $S&P500$ and KOSDAQ data, by using the detrended fluctuation method and the surrogate test. We have found that the returns of international stock market indices of seven countries follow a universal power-law distribution with an exponent of $ζ\approx 3$, while the Korean stock market follows an exponential distribution with an exponent of $β\approx 0.7$. The Hurst exponent analysis of the original return, and its magnitude and sign series, reveal that the long-term-memory propert…
Volatility, fitting with first order Landau expansion, stationarity, and causality of the Taiwan stock market (TAIEX) are investigated based on daily records. Instead of consensuses that consider stock market index change as a random time series we propose the market change as a dual time series consists of the index and the corresponding volume. Therefore, causalities between these two time series are investigated.
We report an empirical study of the Ibovespa index of the Sao Paulo Stock Exchange in which we detect the existence of long-range correlations. To analyze our data we introduce a rescaled variant of the usual Detrended Fluctuation Analysis that allows us to obtain the Hurst exponent through a one-parameter fitting. We also compute a time-dependent Hurst exponent H(t) using three-year moving time windows. In particular, we find that before the launch of the Collor Plan in 1990 the curve H(t) remains, in general, well above 1/2, while afterwards it stays close to 1/2. We thus argue that the stru…
Recently the statistical characterizations of financial markets based on physics concepts and methods attract considerable attentions. We used two possible procedures of analyzing multifractal properties of a time series. The first one uses the continuous wavelet transform and extracts scaling exponents from the wavelet transform amplitudes over all scales. The second method is the multifractal version of the detrended fluctuation analysis method (MF-DFA). The multifractality of a time series we analysed by means of the difference of values singularity stregth as a suitable way to characterise…
By applying the multifractal detrended fluctuation analysis to the high-frequency tick-by-tick data from Deutsche Börse both in the price and in the time domains, we investigate multifractal properties of the time series of logarithmic price increments and inter-trade intervals of time. We show that both quantities reveal multiscaling and that this result holds across different stocks. The origin of the multifractal character of the corresponding dynamics is, among others, the long-range correlations in price increments and in inter-trade time intervals as well as the non-Gaussian distribution…
The statistical properties of the return intervals $τ_q$ between successive 1-min volatilities of 30 liquid Chinese stocks exceeding a certain threshold $q$ are carefully studied. The Kolmogorov-Smirnov (KS) test shows that 12 stocks exhibit scaling behaviors in the distributions of $τ_q$ for different thresholds $q$. Furthermore, the KS test and weighted KS test shows that the scaled return interval distributions of 6 stocks (out of the 12 stocks) can be nicely fitted by a stretched exponential function $f(τ/\barτ)\sim e^{- α(τ/\barτ)^γ}$ with $γ\approx0.31$ under the significance level of 5%…
We propose a novel algorithm - Multifractal Cross-Correlation Analysis (MFCCA) - that constitutes a consistent extension of the Detrended Cross-Correlation Analysis (DCCA) and is able to properly identify and quantify subtle characteristics of multifractal cross-correlations between two time series. Our motivation for introducing this algorithm is that the already existing methods like MF-DXA have at best serious limitations for most of the signals describing complex natural processes and often indicate multifractal cross-correlations when there are none. The principal component of the present…
The Efficient Market Hypothesis has been a staple of economics research for decades. In particular, weak-form market efficiency -- the notion that past prices cannot predict future performance -- is strongly supported by econometric evidence. In contrast, machine learning algorithms implemented to predict stock price have been touted, to varying degrees, as successful. Moreover, some data scientists boast the ability to garner above-market returns using price data alone. This study endeavors to connect existing econometric research on weak-form efficient markets with data science innovations i…
In this paper, three approaches to calculate the self-similarity exponent of a time series are compared in order to determine which one performs best to identify the transition from random efficient market behavior (EM) to herding behavior (HB) and hence, to find out the beginning of a market bubble. In particular, classical Detrended Fluctuation Analysis (DFA), Generalized Hurst Exponent (GHE) and GM2 (one of Geometric Method-based algorithms) were applied for self-similarity exponent calculation purposes. Traditionally, researchers have been focused on identifying the beginning of a crash. I…
We study the statistical regularities of opening call auction using the ultra-high-frequency data of 22 liquid stocks traded on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange in 2003. The distribution of the relative price, defined as the relative difference between the order price in opening call auction and the closing price of last trading day, is asymmetric and that the distribution displays a sharp peak at zero relative price and a relatively wide peak at negative relative price. The detrended fluctuation analysis (DFA) method is adopted to investigate the long-term memory of relative order prices. We furth…
In this study, we perform a novel analysis of the 2015 financial bubble in the Chinese stock market by calibrating the Log Periodic Power Law Singularity (LPPLS) model to two important Chinese stock indices, SSEC and SZSC, from early 2014 to June 2015. The back tests of the 2015 Chinese stock market bubbles indicates that the LPPLS model can readily detect the bubble behavior of the faster-than-exponential increase corrected by the accelerating logarithm-periodic oscillations in the 2015 Chinese Stock market. The existence of log-periodicity is detected by applying the Lomb spectral analysis o…
This paper analyses the behaviour of volatility for several international stock market indexes, namely the SP 500 (USA), the Nikkei (Japan), the PSI 20 (Portugal), the CAC 40 (France), the DAX 30 (Germany), the FTSE 100 (UK), the IBEX 35 (Spain) and the MIB 30 (Italy), in the context of non-stationarity. Our empirical results point to the evidence of the existence of integrated behaviour among several of those stock market indexes of different dimensions. It seems, therefore, that the behaviour of these markets tends to some uniformity, which can be interpreted as the existence of a similar be…
The statistical properties of the bid-ask spread of a frequently traded Chinese stock listed on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange are investigated using the limit-order book data. Three different definitions of spread are considered based on the time right before transactions, the time whenever the highest buying price or the lowest selling price changes, and a fixed time interval. The results are qualitatively similar no matter linear prices or logarithmic prices are used. The average spread exhibits evident intraday patterns consisting of a big L-shape in morning transactions and a small L-shape i…
Time series of price returns for 80 of the most liquid cryptocurrencies listed on Binance are investigated for the presence of detrended cross-correlations. A spectral analysis of the detrended correlation matrix and a topological analysis of the minimal spanning trees calculated based on this matrix are applied for different positions of a moving window. The cryptocurrencies become more strongly cross-correlated among themselves than they used to be before. The average cross-correlations increase with time on a specific time scale in a way that resembles the Epps effect amplification when goi…
We propose a new volatility model based on two stylized facts of the volatility in the stock market: clustering and leverage effect. We calibrate our model parameters, in the leading order, with 77 years Dow Jones Industrial Average data. We find in the short time scale (10 to 50 days) the future volatility is sensitive to the sign of past returns, i.e. asymmetric feedback or leverage effect. However, in the long time scale (300 to 1000 days) clustering becomes the main factor. We study non-stationary features by using moving windows and find that clustering and leverage effects display time e…
In recent publications, the authors have considered inverse statistics of the Dow Jones Industrial Averaged (DJIA) [1-3]. Specifically, we argued that the natural candidate for such statistics is the investment horizons distribution. This is the distribution of waiting times needed to achieve a predefined level of return obtained from detrended historic asset prices. Such a distribution typically goes through a maximum at a time coined the {\em optimal investment horizon}, $τ^*_ρ$, which defines the most likely waiting time for obtaining a given return $ρ$. By considering equal positive and ne…
We report an empirical study of Tehran Price Index (TEPIX). To analyze our data we use various methods like as, rescaled range analysis ($R/S$), modified rescaled range analysis (Lo's method), Detrended Fluctuation Analysis (DFA) and generalized Hurst exponents analysis. Based on numerical results, the scaling range of TEPIX returns is specified, long memory effect or long range correlation property in this market is investigated, characteristic exponent for probability distribution function of TEPIX returns is derived and finally the stage of development in Tehran Stock Exchange is determined…
We present an advance bubble detection methodology based on the Log Periodic Power Law Singularity (LPPLS) confidence indicator for the early causal identification of positive and negative bubbles in the Chinese stock market using the daily data on the Shanghai Shenzhen CSI 300 stock market index from January 2002 through April 2018. We account for the damping condition of LPPLS model in the search space and implement the stricter filter conditions for the qualification of the valid LPPLS fits by taking account of the maximum relative error, performing the Lomb log-periodic test of the detrend…
We investigate the possible drawbacks of employing the standard Pearson estimator to measure correlation coefficients between financial stocks in the presence of non-stationary behavior, and we provide empirical evidence against the well-established common knowledge that using longer price time series provides better, more accurate, correlation estimates. Then, we investigate the possible consequences of instabilities in empirical correlation coefficient measurements on optimal portfolio selection. We rely on previously published works which provide a framework allowing to take into account po…
We consider the roughness properties of NYSE (New York Stock Exchange) stock-price fluctuations. The statistical properties of the data are relatively homogeneous within the same day but the large jumps between different days prevent the extension of the analysis to large times. This leads to intrinsic finite size effects which alter the apparent Hurst (H) exponent. We show, by analytical methods, that finite size effects always lead to an enhancement of H. We then consider the effect of fat tails on the analysis of the roughness and show that the finite size effects are strongly enhanced by t…
Technical trading rules have been widely used by practitioners in financial markets for a long time. The profitability remains controversial and few consider the stationarity of technical indicators used in trading rules. We convert MA, KDJ and Bollinger bands into stationary processes and investigate the profitability of these trading rules by using 3 high-frequency data(15s,30s and 60s) of CSI300 Stock Index Futures from January 4th 2012 to December 31st 2016. Several performance and risk measures are adopted to assess the practical value of all trading rules directly while ADF-test is used …
Econophysics is a science in its infancy, born about ten years ago at this time of writing, at the crossing roads of physics, mathematics, computing and of course economics and finance. It also covers human sciences, because all economics is ultimately driven by human decision. From this human factor, econophysics has no hope to achieve the status of an exact science, but it is interesting to discover what can be achieved, discovering potential limits and trying try to push further away these limits. A few data analysis techniques are described with emphasis on the Detrended Fluctuation Analys…
We investigate the problem of learning undirected graphical models under Laplacian structural constraints from the point of view of financial market data. We show that Laplacian constraints have meaningful physical interpretations related to the market index factor and to the conditional correlations between stocks. Those interpretations lead to a set of guidelines that users should be aware of when estimating graphs in financial markets. In addition, we propose algorithms to learn undirected graphs that account for stylized facts and tasks intrinsic to financial data such as non-stationarity …
Long-range correlation in financial time series reflects the complex dynamics of the stock markets driven by algorithms and human decisions. Our analysis exploits ultra-high frequency order book data from NASDAQ Nordic over a period of three years to numerically estimate the power-law scaling exponents using detrended fluctuation analysis (DFA). We address inter-event durations (order to order, trade to trade, cancel to cancel) as well as cross-event durations (time from order submission to its trade or cancel). We find strong evidence of long-range correlation, which is consistent across diff…
Stock markets can become inefficient due to calendar anomalies known as day-of-the-week effect. Calendar anomalies are well-known in financial literature, but the phenomena remain to be explored in econophysics. In this paper we use multifractal analysis to evaluate if the temporal dynamics of market returns also exhibits calendar anomalies such as day-of-the-week effects. We apply the multifractal detrended fluctuation analysis (MF-DFA) to daily returns of market indices around the world for each day of the week. Our results indicate that individual days of the week are characterized by disti…
The problem of non-stationarity in financial markets is discussed and related to the dynamic nature of price volatility. A new measure is proposed for estimation of the current asset volatility. A simple and illustrative explanation is suggested of the emergence of significant serial autocorrelations in volatility and squared returns. It is shown that when non-stationarity is eliminated, the autocorrelations substantially reduce and become statistically insignificant. The causes of non-Gaussian nature of the probability of returns distribution are considered. For both stock and currency market…
We study the dependence structure of market states by estimating empirical pairwise copulas of daily stock returns. We consider both original returns, which exhibit time-varying trends and volatilities, as well as locally normalized ones, where the non-stationarity has been removed. The empirical pairwise copula for each state is compared with a bivariate K-copula. This copula arises from a recently introduced random matrix model, in which non-stationary correlations between returns are modeled by an ensemble of random matrices. The comparison reveals overall good agreement between empirical a…
Based on a recently proposed $q$-dependent detrended cross-correlation coefficient $ρ_q$, we generalize the concept of minimum spanning tree (MST) by introducing a family of $q$-dependent minimum spanning trees ($q$MST) that are selective to cross-correlations between different fluctuation amplitudes and different time scales. They inherit this ability directly from the coefficients $ρ_q$ that are processed here to construct a distance matrix. Conventional MST with detrending corresponds in this context to $q=2$. We apply the $q$MSTs to sample empirical data from the stock market and discuss t…
In this study the cross-correlations between the cryptocurrency market represented by the two most liquid and highest-capitalized cryptocurrencies: bitcoin and ethereum, on the one side, and the instruments representing the traditional financial markets: stock indices, Forex, commodities, on the other side, are measured in the period: January 2020--October 2022. Our purpose is to address the question whether the cryptocurrency market still preserves its autonomy with respect to the traditional financial markets or it has already aligned with them in expense of its independence. We are motivate…
We study the statistical properties of the recurrence intervals $τ$ between successive trading volumes exceeding a certain threshold $q$. The recurrence interval analysis is carried out for the 20 liquid Chinese stocks covering a period from January 2000 to May 2009, and two Chinese indices from January 2003 to April 2009. Similar to the recurrence interval distribution of the price returns, the tail of the recurrence interval distribution of the trading volumes follows a power-law scaling, and the results are verified by the goodness-of-fit tests using the Kolmogorov-Smirnov (KS) statistic, t…
We study the long-term memory in diverse stock market indices and foreign exchange rates using the Detrended Fluctuation Analysis(DFA). For all daily and high-frequency market data studied, no significant long-term memory property is detected in the return series, while a strong long-term memory property is found in the volatility time series. The possible causes of the long-term memory property are investigated using the return data filtered by the AR(1) model, reflecting the short-term memory property, and the GARCH(1,1) model, reflecting the volatility clustering property, respectively. Not…
In this paper we propose a deep recurrent model based on the order flow for the stationary modelling of the high-frequency directional prices movements. The order flow is the microsecond stream of orders arriving at the exchange, driving the formation of prices seen on the price chart of a stock or currency. To test the stationarity of our proposed model we train our model on data before the 2017 Bitcoin bubble period and test our model during and after the bubble. We show that without any retraining, the proposed model is temporally stable even as Bitcoin trading shifts into an extremely vola…
In this paper, we provide non-parametric statistical tools to test stationarity of microstructure noise in general hidden Ito semimartingales, and discuss how to measure liquidity risk using high frequency financial data. In particular, we investigate the impact of non-stationary microstructure noise on some volatility estimators, and design three complementary tests by exploiting edge effects, information aggregation of local estimates and high-frequency asymptotic approximation. The asymptotic distributions of these tests are available under both stationary and non-stationary assumptions, th…
We present a brief overview of random matrix theory (RMT) with the objectives of highlighting the computational results and applications in financial markets as complex systems. An oft-encountered problem in computational finance is the choice of an appropriate epoch over which the empirical cross-correlation return matrix is computed. A long epoch would smoothen the fluctuations in the return time series and suffers from non-stationarity, whereas a short epoch results in noisy fluctuations in the return time series and the correlation matrices turn out to be highly singular. An effective meth…
The understanding of complex systems has become a central issue because complex systems exist in a wide range of scientific disciplines. Time series are typical experimental results we have about complex systems. In the analysis of such time series, stationary situations have been extensively studied and correlations have been found to be a very powerful tool. Yet most natural processes are non-stationary. In particular, in times of crisis, accident or trouble, stationarity is lost. As examples we may think of financial markets, biological systems, reactors or the weather. In non-stationary si…