Malliavin-Mancino estimators implemented with non-uniform fast Fourier transforms

Abstract

We implement and test kernel averaging Non-Uniform Fast-Fourier Transform (NUFFT) methods to enhance the performance of correlation and covariance estimation on asynchronously sampled event-data using the Malliavin-Mancino Fourier estimator. The methods are benchmarked for Dirichlet and Fejér Fourier basis kernels. We consider test cases formed from Geometric Brownian motions to replicate synchronous and asynchronous data for benchmarking purposes. We consider three standard averaging kernels to convolve the event-data for synchronisation via over-sampling for use with the Fast Fourier Transform (FFT): the Gaussian kernel, the Kaiser-Bessel kernel, and the exponential of semi-circle kernel. First, this allows us to demonstrate the performance of the estimator with different combinations of basis kernels and averaging kernels. Second, we investigate and compare the impact of the averaging scales explicit in each averaging kernel and its relationship between the time-scale averaging implicit in the Malliavin-Mancino estimator. Third, we demonstrate the relationship between time-scale averaging based on the number of Fourier coefficients used in the estimator to a theoretical model of the Epps effect. We briefly demonstrate the methods on Trade-and-Quote (TAQ) data from the Johannesburg Stock Exchange to make an initial visualisation of the correlation dynamics for various time-scales under market microstructure.