Maximum entropy distribution of stock price fluctuations

Rosario Bartiromo

Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, 2013, vol. 392, issue 7, 1638-1647

Abstract: In this paper we propose to use the principle of absence of arbitrage opportunities in its entropic interpretation to obtain the distribution of stock price fluctuations by maximizing its information entropy. We show that this approach leads to a physical description of the underlying dynamics as a random walk characterized by a stochastic diffusion coefficient and constrained to a given value of the expected volatility, in this way taking into account the information provided by the existence of an option market. The model is validated by a comprehensive comparison with observed distributions of both price return and diffusion coefficient. Expected volatility is the only parameter in the model and can be obtained by analysing option prices. We give an analytic formulation of the probability density function for price returns which can be used to extract expected volatility from stock option data.

Keywords: Econophysics; Financial markets; Time series analysis; Information theory; Entropy; Derivative pricing (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378437112010138
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only. Journal offers the option of making the article available online on Science direct for a fee of $3,000

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:phsmap:v:392:y:2013:i:7:p:1638-1647

DOI: 10.1016/j.physa.2012.11.048

Access Statistics for this article

Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications is currently edited by K. A. Dawson, J. O. Indekeu, H.E. Stanley and C. Tsallis

More articles in Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().