We use a sample of option prices, and the method of Bakshi, Kapadia and Madan (2003), to estimate the ex ante higher moments of the underlying individual securities' risk-neutral returns distribution. We find that individual securities' volatility, skewness, and kurtosis are strongly related to...

We estimate MIDAS regressions with various (bi)power variations to predict future volatility measured via increments in quadratic variation. Instead of pre-determining the (bi)power variation we parameterize it and estimate the intra-daily return power transformation that optimally predicts...