Solved – How to interpret GARCH volatility forecast

garchvolatility-forecasting

I am trying to model the volatility of gold using GARCH models and here is the forecast that I obtained.
Gold Volatility

The plot seems to indicate that the volatility decreases as time passes but I was expecting to see something like an increased volatility over time. Can anyone explain why this is the case?
Please don't pay attention to the x-axis don't know how to change that, it's like that by default, the real date is 2009-2013.

Best Answer

If you estimated a standard GARCH(s,r) model, the parameters were likely restricted to produce stationary conditional variance, which means it is mean reverting. This is what you see -- the variance gradually reverts towards its long-term mean.

An alternative GARCH-type of model that allows for non-mean-reverting volatility is integrated GARCH (IGARCH) that produces random-walk-type of volatility; or a GARCH model with exogenous variables (such as linear or nonlinear deterministic trend) in the conditional variance equation, which produces -- naturally -- a linear or nonlinear trend in volatility.

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