Volatility Persistence and Momentum

40 Pages Posted: 7 Oct 2020

Date Written: October 3, 2020

Abstract

Volatility persistence is an important channel for understanding rational momentum effects. Since risk premia are, ceteris paribus, proportional to the volatility of the aggregate market or individual assets, momentum in the risk premia is expected to be strong when the volatility is highly persistent. I present empirical evidence that volatility persistence could capture the autoregressive risk premium. It also suggests that momentum profits can be attributed to time-varying risk. Furthermore, after controlling for risk-based momentum effect, the relationship between past and current returns turns out to be unclear, meaning that momentum exists mostly at the risk premium level.

Keywords: volatility persistence, momentum, time-varying risk premia, business cycles

JEL Classification: G12

Suggested Citation

Lee, Woongki, Volatility Persistence and Momentum (October 3, 2020). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3704671 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3704671

Woongki Lee (Contact Author)

Korea University ( email )

Anam-Dong, Seongbuk-Gu
Seoul 136-701, Seoul 136701
Korea, Republic of (South Korea)
82-10-9759-8400 (Phone)

HOME PAGE: http://sites.google.com/view/wlee

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