# Density Estimation of High-Frequency Financial Data

Frequently we will want to estimate the empirical probability density function of real-world data and compare it to the theoretical density from one or more probability distributions. The following example shows the empirical and theoretical normal density for EUR/USD high-frequency tick data $$X$$ (which has been transformed using log-returns and normalized via $$\frac{X_i-\mu_X}{\sigma_X}$$). The theoretical normal density is plotted over the range $$\left(\lfloor\mathrm{min}(X)\rfloor,\lceil\mathrm{max}(X)\rceil\right)$$. The results are in the figure below. The discontinuities and asymmetry of the discrete tick data, as well as the sharp kurtosis and heavy tails (a corresponding interval of $$\approx \left[-8,+7\right]$$ standard deviations away from the mean) are apparent from the plot.

Empirical and Theoretical Tick Density

We also show the theoretical and empirical density for the EUR/USD exchange rate log returns over different timescales. We can see from these plots that the distribution of the log returns seems to be asymptotically converging to normality. This is a typical empirical property of financial data.

Density Estimate Across Varying Timescales

The following R source generates empirical and theoretical density plots across different timescales. The data is loaded from files that are sampled at different intervals. I cant supply the data unfortunately, but you should get the idea.

# Function that reads Reuters CSV tick data and converts Reuters dates
# Assumes format is Date,Tick
tickData$Date <- as.POSIXct(strptime(tickData$Date, format="%d/%m/%Y %H:%M:%S"))
tickData
}

# Boilerplate function for Reuters FX tick data transformation and density plot
plot.reutersFXDensity <- function() {
filenames <- c("data/eur_usd_tick_26_10_2007.csv",
"data/eur_usd_1min_26_10_2007.csv",
"data/eur_usd_5min_26_10_2007.csv",
"data/eur_usd_hourly_26_10_2007.csv",
"data/eur_usd_daily_26_10_2007.csv")
labels <- c("Tick", "1 Minute", "5 Minutes", "Hourly", "Daily")

par(mfrow=c(length(filenames), 2),mar=c(0,0,2,0), cex.main=2)
tickData <- c()
i <- 1
for (filename in filenames) {
# Transform: $Y = \nabla\log(X_i)$
logtick <- diff(log(tickData[[i]]$Tick)) # Normalize: $\frac{(Y-\mu_Y)}{\sigma_Y}$ logtick <- (logtick-mean(logtick))/sd(logtick) # Theoretical density range: $\left[\lfloor\mathrm{min}(Y)\rfloor,\lceil\mathrm{max}(Y)\rceil\right]\$