TY  - JOUR
A1  - Bertschinger, Nils
A1  - Pfante, Oliver
T1  - Early warning signs of financial market turmoils
T2  - Journal of Risk and Financial Management
N2  - Volatility clustering and fat tails are prominently observed in financial markets. Here, we analyze the underlying mechanisms of three agent-based models explaining these stylized facts in terms of market instabilities and compare them on empirical grounds. To this end, we first develop a general framework for detecting tail events in stock markets. In particular, we introduce Hawkes processes to automatically identify and date onsets of market turmoils which result in increased volatility. Second, we introduce three different indicators to predict those onsets. Each of the three indicators is derived from and tailored to one of the models, namely quantifying information content, critical slowing down or market risk perception. Finally, we apply our indicators to simulated and real market data. We find that all indicators reliably predict market events on simulated data and clearly distinguish the different models. In contrast, a systematic comparison on the stocks of the Forbes 500 companies shows a markedly lower performance. Overall, predicting the onset of market turmoils appears difficult, yet, over very short time horizons high or rising volatility exhibits some predictive power.
KW  - volatility clustering
KW  - agent-based modeling
KW  - hawkes processes
KW  - early warning signs
Y1  - 2020
UR  - http://publikationen.ub.uni-frankfurt.de/frontdoor/index/index/docId/56521
UR  - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:hebis:30:3-565216
SN  - 1911-8074
SN  - 1911-8066
VL  - 13
IS  - 301
PB  - MDPI
CY  - Basel
ER  -