This discussion paper resulted in a publication in the 'Journal of Banking and Finance', 2014, 38, 89-105.<P> This paper documents that speed is crucially important for high frequency trading strategies based on U.S. macroeconomic news releases. Using order level data of the highly liquid S&P500...</p>

In this paper we compare the predictive abilility of Stochastic Volatility (SV)models to that of volatility forecasts implied by option prices. We develop anSV model with implied volatility as an exogeneous var able in the varianceequation which facilitates the use of statistical tests for...