The Distribution of Returns at Longer Horizons

Abstract:     
Longer horizon returns are constructed from data on daily returns. Observed drawbacks of a Lévy process are a sharp decrease in skewness and excess kurtosis. Drawbacks to scaling are a flat term structure of skewness and excess kurtosis. A strategy that combines some exposure to independent increments and some exposure to scaling is developed in the context of self decomposable daily return distributions. Estimations are conducted on 400 stocks and we report that a good strategy for constructing longer horizon returns can be that of accumulating as i.i.d. half the daily return while scaling the remainder at rate one half.

Number of Pages in PDF File: 20

Keywords: self similarity, independent increments, term structure of moments

JEL Classification: G1, G11, G12

working papers series