Nº 21-95: Machine Learning for Predicting Stock Return Volatility

We use machine learning methods to predict stock return volatility. Our out-of-sample prediction of realised volatility for a large cross-section of US stocks over the sample period from 1992 to 2016 is on average 44.1% against the actual realised volatility of 43.8% with an R2 being as high as double the ones reported in the literature. We further show that machine learning methods can capture the stylized facts about volatility without relying on any assumption about the distribution of stock returns. Finally, we show that our long short-term memory model outperforms other models by properly carrying information from the past predictor values.