• The Korean Journal of Applied Statistics
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• v.29 no.1
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• pp.85-98
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• 2016

This study makes an empirical comparison of various realized volatilities (RVs) in terms of overnight returns. In financial asset markets, during overnight or holidays, no or few trading data are available causing a difficulty in computing RVs for a whole span of a day. A review will be made on several RVs reflecting overnight return variations. The comparison is made for forecast accuracies of several RVs for some financial assets: the US S&P500 index, the US NASDAQ index, the KOSPI (Korean Stock Price Index), and the foreign exchange rate of the Korea won relative to the US dollar. The RV of a day is compared with the square of the next day log-return, which is a proxy for the integrated volatility of the day. The comparison is made by investigating the Mean Absolute Error (MAE) and the Root Mean Square Error (RMSE). Statistical inference of MAE and RMSE is made by applying the model confidence set (MCS) approach and the Diebold-Mariano test. For the three index data, a specific RV emerges as the best one, which addresses overnight return variations by inflating daytime RV.