Modeling the Conditional Heteroscedasticity and Leverage Effect in the BSE Sectoral Indices

The study uses three volatility models of the GARCH family to examine the volatility behavior and in particular volatility persistence or long memory of the return series of four Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) sectoral indices. The study uses the daily data from January 1, 2002 to December 31, 2013. The results of the standard GARCH model suggest the presence of volatility persistence in the return series of all four indices. The EGARCH results suggest that the leverage effect is present and significant for BSE IT and BSE Bankex only, implying that BSE Metal and BSE PSU can be good investment in anticipation of bad times. The CGARCH estimates indicate that the short-run volatility component is weaker. However, the permanent components of the conditional variance exhibit a high degree of persistence for all return series