IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/reveco/v87y2023icp457-467.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Oil futures volatility prediction: Bagging or combination?

Author

Listed:
  • Lyu, Zhichong
  • Ma, Feng
  • Zhang, Jixiang

Abstract

This paper compares the predictive performance of the bagging method and traditional combination models for forecasting oil futures volatility, using economic policy uncertainty (EPU) indices and macroeconomic variables as predictors. Our empirical findings indicate that the bagging method outperforms the conventional combination models, demonstrating the effectiveness of machine learning combination models. These results are confirmed by different evaluation methods, alternative forecasting methods, and alternative oil futures, and hold up during the COVID-19 pandemic and various business cycles. Furthermore, we show that EPU indices are more useful than macroeconomic variables for forecasting oil volatility during the COVID-19 pandemic. Thus, our analysis provides new insights into combination forecasts.

Suggested Citation

  • Lyu, Zhichong & Ma, Feng & Zhang, Jixiang, 2023. "Oil futures volatility prediction: Bagging or combination?," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 87(C), pages 457-467.
  • Handle: RePEc:eee:reveco:v:87:y:2023:i:c:p:457-467
    DOI: 10.1016/j.iref.2023.05.007
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1059056023001594
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.iref.2023.05.007?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Ivo Welch & Amit Goyal, 2008. "A Comprehensive Look at The Empirical Performance of Equity Premium Prediction," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 21(4), pages 1455-1508, July.
    2. Zhang, Li & Wang, Lu & Wang, Xunxiao & Zhang, Yaojie & Pan, Zhigang, 2022. "How macro-variables drive crude oil volatility? Perspective from the STL-based iterated combination method," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 77(C).
    3. David Rapach & Jack Strauss, 2010. "Bagging or Combining (or Both)? An Analysis Based on Forecasting U.S. Employment Growth," Econometric Reviews, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 29(5-6), pages 511-533.
    4. Ron Alquist & Lutz Kilian, 2010. "What do we learn from the price of crude oil futures?," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 25(4), pages 539-573.
    5. Rapach, David E. & Strauss, Jack K., 2012. "Forecasting US state-level employment growth: An amalgamation approach," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 28(2), pages 315-327.
    6. Yang, Ke & Tian, Fengping & Chen, Langnan & Li, Steven, 2017. "Realized volatility forecast of agricultural futures using the HAR models with bagging and combination approaches," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 49(C), pages 276-291.
    7. Zhang, Yaojie & Ma, Feng & Wang, Yudong, 2019. "Forecasting crude oil prices with a large set of predictors: Can LASSO select powerful predictors?," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 54(C), pages 97-117.
    8. Inoue, Atsushi & Kilian, Lutz, 2008. "How Useful Is Bagging in Forecasting Economic Time Series? A Case Study of U.S. Consumer Price Inflation," Journal of the American Statistical Association, American Statistical Association, vol. 103, pages 511-522, June.
    9. Becker, Ralf & Clements, Adam E., 2008. "Are combination forecasts of S&P 500 volatility statistically superior?," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 24(1), pages 122-133.
    10. Lu, Xinjie & Ma, Feng & Wang, Jiqian & Zhu, Bo, 2021. "Oil shocks and stock market volatility: New evidence," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 103(C).
    11. Lutz Kilian & Cheolbeom Park, 2009. "The Impact Of Oil Price Shocks On The U.S. Stock Market," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 50(4), pages 1267-1287, November.
    12. Jordan, Steven J. & Vivian, Andrew & Wohar, Mark E., 2017. "Forecasting market returns: bagging or combining?," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 33(1), pages 102-120.
    13. Rangan Gupta & Mampho P. Modise & Josine Uwilingiye, 2016. "Out-of-Sample Equity Premium Predictability in South Africa: Evidence from a Large Number of Predictors," Emerging Markets Finance and Trade, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 52(8), pages 1935-1955, August.
    14. David Bourghelle & Fredj Jawadi & Philippe Rozin, 2021. "Oil price volatility in the context of Covid-19," International Economics, CEPII research center, issue 167, pages 39-49.
    15. Peter R. Hansen & Asger Lunde & James M. Nason, 2011. "The Model Confidence Set," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 79(2), pages 453-497, March.
    16. Yi, Yongsheng & Ma, Feng & Zhang, Yaojie & Huang, Dengshi, 2018. "Forecasting the prices of crude oil using the predictor, economic and combined constraints," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 75(C), pages 237-245.
    17. Scott R. Baker & Nicholas Bloom & Steven J. Davis, 2016. "Measuring Economic Policy Uncertainty," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 131(4), pages 1593-1636.
    18. Linlan Xiao & Vigdis Boasson & Sergey Shishlenin & Victoria Makushina, 2018. "Volatility forecasting: combinations of realized volatility measures and forecasting models," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 50(13), pages 1428-1441, March.
    19. Fang, Libing & Yu, Honghai & Li, Lei, 2017. "The effect of economic policy uncertainty on the long-term correlation between U.S. stock and bond markets," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 66(C), pages 139-145.
    20. Andersen, Torben G & Bollerslev, Tim, 1998. "Answering the Skeptics: Yes, Standard Volatility Models Do Provide Accurate Forecasts," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 39(4), pages 885-905, November.
    21. Clark, Todd E. & West, Kenneth D., 2007. "Approximately normal tests for equal predictive accuracy in nested models," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 138(1), pages 291-311, May.
    22. Lu, Xinjie & Ma, Feng & Wang, Jiqian & Wang, Jianqiong, 2020. "Examining the predictive information of CBOE OVX on China’s oil futures volatility: Evidence from MS-MIDAS models," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 212(C).
    23. Christopher J. Neely & David E. Rapach & Jun Tu & Guofu Zhou, 2014. "Forecasting the Equity Risk Premium: The Role of Technical Indicators," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 60(7), pages 1772-1791, July.
    24. Zeng, Qing & Lu, Xinjie & Dong, Dayong & Li, Pan, 2022. "Category-specific EPU indices, macroeconomic variables and stock market return predictability," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 84(C).
    25. Stavroula P. Fameliti & Vasiliki D. Skintzi, 2020. "Predictive ability and economic gains from volatility forecast combinations," Journal of Forecasting, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 39(2), pages 200-219, March.
    26. Filis, George, 2010. "Macro economy, stock market and oil prices: Do meaningful relationships exist among their cyclical fluctuations?," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 32(4), pages 877-886, July.
    27. Bergmeir, Christoph & Hyndman, Rob J. & Benítez, José M., 2016. "Bagging exponential smoothing methods using STL decomposition and Box–Cox transformation," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 32(2), pages 303-312.
    28. Chao Liang & Feng Ma & Lu Wang & Qing Zeng, 2021. "The information content of uncertainty indices for natural gas futures volatility forecasting," Journal of Forecasting, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 40(7), pages 1310-1324, November.
    29. Mele, Antonio, 2007. "Asymmetric stock market volatility and the cyclical behavior of expected returns," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 86(2), pages 446-478, November.
    30. Huang, Yisu & Ma, Feng & Bouri, Elie & Huang, Dengshi, 2023. "A comprehensive investigation on the predictive power of economic policy uncertainty from non-U.S. countries for U.S. stock market returns," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 87(C).
    31. Feng Ma & Chao Liang & Qing Zeng & Haibo Li, 2021. "Jumps and oil futures volatility forecasting: a new insight," Quantitative Finance, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 21(5), pages 853-863, May.
    32. Wang, Jiqian & Ma, Feng & Bouri, Elie & Zhong, Juandan, 2022. "Volatility of clean energy and natural gas, uncertainty indices, and global economic conditions," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 108(C).
    33. Petropoulos, Fotios & Hyndman, Rob J. & Bergmeir, Christoph, 2018. "Exploring the sources of uncertainty: Why does bagging for time series forecasting work?," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 268(2), pages 545-554.
    34. Liang, Chao & Ma, Feng & Li, Ziyang & Li, Yan, 2020. "Which types of commodity price information are more useful for predicting US stock market volatility?," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 93(C), pages 642-650.
    35. Wu, Binghui & Duan, Tingting, 2017. "The fractal feature and price trend in the gold future market at the Shanghai Futures Exchange (SFE)," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 474(C), pages 99-106.
    36. Chao Liang & Yaojie Zhang & Xiafei Li & Feng Ma, 2022. "Which predictor is more predictive for Bitcoin volatility? And why?," International Journal of Finance & Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 27(2), pages 1947-1961, April.
    37. Wang, Jiqian & Lu, Xinjie & He, Feng & Ma, Feng, 2020. "Which popular predictor is more useful to forecast international stock markets during the coronavirus pandemic: VIX vs EPU?," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 72(C).
    38. Karnizova, Lilia & Li, Jiaxiong (Chris), 2014. "Economic policy uncertainty, financial markets and probability of US recessions," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 125(2), pages 261-265.
    39. Patton, Andrew J., 2011. "Volatility forecast comparison using imperfect volatility proxies," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 160(1), pages 246-256, January.
    40. Yezhou Sha & Susan Sunila Sharma, 2020. "Research on Pandemics Special Issue of the Journal Emerging Markets Finance and Trade," Emerging Markets Finance and Trade, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 56(10), pages 2133-2137, August.
    41. Patton, Andrew J. & Sheppard, Kevin, 2009. "Optimal combinations of realised volatility estimators," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 25(2), pages 218-238.
    42. Zhang, Yaojie & Ma, Feng & Wei, Yu, 2019. "Out-of-sample prediction of the oil futures market volatility: A comparison of new and traditional combination approaches," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 81(C), pages 1109-1120.
    43. Ma, Feng & Liu, Jing & Wahab, M.I.M. & Zhang, Yaojie, 2018. "Forecasting the aggregate oil price volatility in a data-rich environment," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 72(C), pages 320-332.
    44. David E. Rapach & Jack K. Strauss & Guofu Zhou, 2010. "Out-of-Sample Equity Premium Prediction: Combination Forecasts and Links to the Real Economy," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 23(2), pages 821-862, February.
    45. Jordan, Steven J. & Vivian, Andrew & Wohar, Mark E., 2016. "Can commodity returns forecast Canadian sector stock returns?," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 41(C), pages 172-188.
    46. Wen, Fenghua & Tong, Xi & Ren, Xiaohang, 2022. "Gold or Bitcoin, which is the safe haven during the COVID-19 pandemic?," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 81(C).
    47. Zhang, Yaojie & Ma, Feng & Shi, Benshan & Huang, Dengshi, 2018. "Forecasting the prices of crude oil: An iterated combination approach," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 70(C), pages 472-483.
    48. Eric Hillebrand & Marcelo Medeiros, 2010. "The Benefits of Bagging for Forecast Models of Realized Volatility," Econometric Reviews, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 29(5-6), pages 571-593.
    49. Wang, Jue & Athanasopoulos, George & Hyndman, Rob J. & Wang, Shouyang, 2018. "Crude oil price forecasting based on internet concern using an extreme learning machine," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 34(4), pages 665-677.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Lu, Xinjie & Ma, Feng & Xu, Jin & Zhang, Zehui, 2022. "Oil futures volatility predictability: New evidence based on machine learning models11All the authors contribute to the paper equally," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 83(C).
    2. Guo, Yangli & Ma, Feng & Li, Haibo & Lai, Xiaodong, 2022. "Oil price volatility predictability based on global economic conditions," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 82(C).
    3. Zhang, Yaojie & Lei, Likun & Wei, Yu, 2020. "Forecasting the Chinese stock market volatility with international market volatilities: The role of regime switching," The North American Journal of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 52(C).
    4. Lu, Xinjie & Ma, Feng & Wang, Tianyang & Wen, Fenghua, 2023. "International stock market volatility: A data-rich environment based on oil shocks," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 214(C), pages 184-215.
    5. Danyan Wen & Mengxi He & Yaojie Zhang & Yudong Wang, 2022. "Forecasting realized volatility of Chinese stock market: A simple but efficient truncated approach," Journal of Forecasting, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 41(2), pages 230-251, March.
    6. Zhang, Yaojie & Ma, Feng & Wei, Yu, 2019. "Out-of-sample prediction of the oil futures market volatility: A comparison of new and traditional combination approaches," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 81(C), pages 1109-1120.
    7. Zhang, Yaojie & Wei, Yu & Zhang, Yi & Jin, Daxiang, 2019. "Forecasting oil price volatility: Forecast combination versus shrinkage method," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 80(C), pages 423-433.
    8. Luo, Qin & Bu, Jinfeng & Xu, Weiju & Huang, Dengshi, 2023. "Stock market volatility prediction: Evidence from a new bagging model," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 87(C), pages 445-456.
    9. Chao Liang & Yu Wei & Likun Lei & Feng Ma, 2022. "Global equity market volatility forecasting: New evidence," International Journal of Finance & Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 27(1), pages 594-609, January.
    10. Chao Liang & Feng Ma & Lu Wang & Qing Zeng, 2021. "The information content of uncertainty indices for natural gas futures volatility forecasting," Journal of Forecasting, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 40(7), pages 1310-1324, November.
    11. Li, Zhao-Chen & Xie, Chi & Zeng, Zhi-Jian & Wang, Gang-Jin & Zhang, Ting, 2023. "Forecasting global stock market volatilities in an uncertain world," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 85(C).
    12. Guo, Yangli & He, Feng & Liang, Chao & Ma, Feng, 2022. "Oil price volatility predictability: New evidence from a scaled PCA approach," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 105(C).
    13. Liu, Jing & Ma, Feng & Zhang, Yaojie, 2019. "Forecasting the Chinese stock volatility across global stock markets," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 525(C), pages 466-477.
    14. Zeng, Qing & Lu, Xinjie & Dong, Dayong & Li, Pan, 2022. "Category-specific EPU indices, macroeconomic variables and stock market return predictability," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 84(C).
    15. Cheng, Xian & Wu, Peng & Liao, Stephen Shaoyi & Wang, Xuelian, 2023. "An integrated model for crude oil forecasting: Causality assessment and technical efficiency," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 117(C).
    16. Lu, Xinjie & Ma, Feng & Wang, Jiqian & Zhu, Bo, 2021. "Oil shocks and stock market volatility: New evidence," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 103(C).
    17. Song, Yixuan & He, Mengxi & Wang, Yudong & Zhang, Yaojie, 2022. "Forecasting crude oil market volatility: A newspaper-based predictor regarding petroleum market volatility," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 79(C).
    18. Chao Liang & Yaojie Zhang & Xiafei Li & Feng Ma, 2022. "Which predictor is more predictive for Bitcoin volatility? And why?," International Journal of Finance & Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 27(2), pages 1947-1961, April.
    19. Lu, Fei & Ma, Feng & Li, Pan & Huang, Dengshi, 2022. "Natural gas volatility predictability in a data-rich world," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 83(C).
    20. Wang, Jiqian & He, Xiaofeng & Ma, Feng & Li, Pan, 2022. "Uncertainty and oil volatility: Evidence from shrinkage method," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 75(C).

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:reveco:v:87:y:2023:i:c:p:457-467. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/inca/620165 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.