Exploring the Relation between Realised Volatility and Trading Volume: Evidence from International Stock Market

Objective: The sequential information theory and mixed distribution hypothesis contends that there exists a bi-directional relation between realised volatility and trading volume. This position has led to the proposition that new information spreads sequentially and reaches market participants at varying times. The purpose of this study was to re-examine these theories. Research Design & Methods: A Granger causality test, Mean Square Error and Mean Average error models were applied to investigate the relationship between realised volatility and trading volume for a sample of five international stock markets from March 5, 2018, to March 5, 2023. Findings: The findings of this study contradict the proposition put forth by the sequential information theory and mixed distribution hypothesis where no meaningful relationship was observed between realised volatility and trading volume except for the CAC 40. Hence, new information rather filters through financial markets at the same time. This finding maybe the explanation for the ever-increasing financial contagion between financial markets. Contribution & Value Added: Traders may need to rely on other indicators and adjust their strategies to incorporate different signals or factors that are more relevant for predicting or identifying market movements. It may become more challenging to gauge the liquidity conditions in the market based solely on volatility. Market participants may need to rely on other liquidity indicators, such as bid-ask spreads, order book depth, or trade size distribution, to assess market liquidity

Modeling of Commuters’ Mode Choice and Office Location/Relocation Preferences of Business Firms for Informed Decision-Making and Planning: Applications of Stated Preference Methodology

Stated preference (SP) methodology is used to examine the mode choice preferences of commuters considering the addition of a non-existent Light Rail Transit (LRT) system. The study also investigates how telecommuting may influence the location/relocation of offices within a multinucleated region. Two separate surveys were carried out: A survey on commuters’ mode choice; and a survey on office location/relocation preferences within the Ottawa municipal area. Surveys elicited SP responses to a number of hypothetical scenarios defined according to the principles of SP experimental design.Additional information about the characteristics of commuters and companies was also obtained. Discrete choice analysis was used to estimate the parameters of the utility function using data collected from the surveys. The innovation in this research is the use of these SP methodologies to understand the role of certain factors in commuters’ mode preferences and the location/relocation preferences of office space within an urban area

The role of family and peer relationships in the development of eating disorders among adolescent girls in Buea Municipality

This study aims to investigate the impact of family and peer relationships on the development of eating disorders among adolescent girls in Buea Municipality. The researcher conducted a study involving adolescent girls aged 13 to 19 in order to gain a genuine understanding of the various factors that influence eating disorders in this age group. The researcher employed a descriptive research design and distributed questionnaires to both the caregivers and the adolescent girls. The researcher employed the snowballing sampling technique to select households with adolescent girls, while convenience sampling was utilized to select participants for this research. Questionnaires were administered to a group of 25 caregivers/parents and 25 adolescent girls in order to gather information for the research objectives. After collecting the data, the researcher utilized tables and charts to effectively communicate the findings obtained from the questionnaires. The study findings highlighted the crucial influence of family dynamics, peer pressure, and media exposure on the development of adolescents' eating habits, body image perceptions, and attitudes towards food and weight. A considerable number of participants indicated that their eating behaviors were influenced by their parents, the way their families communicated, and exposure to conversations about dieting and body dissatisfaction. Peer interactions and media exposure were found to have a significant impact on respondents' dietary choices, body satisfaction, and engagement in disordered eating behaviors. Many participants mentioned that peer pressure and social comparison played a role in influencing these aspects of their lives

Statistical properties, dynamic conditional correlation, and scaling analysis: evidence from international financial markets high-frequency data

High-frequency data offers unparalleled insights into market dynamics, facilitating the analysis of statistical properties, dynamic correlations, and scaling behaviours with a precision previously unattainable. These Statistical Properties are essential framework for understanding and modelling the interactions between global financial markets over time. The aim of this study was to investigate the dynamic conditional correlations and scaling behaviour of high-frequency data from January,1 2010 to December 31, 2020. Using the S&P 500, FTSE 100, Nikkei 225, HKEX and DAX as sampled financial markets, the results revealed significant differences in correlation patterns across the markets, as well as fractal-like scaling behaviour. The relationship between the S&P 500-FTSE 100 and S&P 500-DAX supports trend-following strategies, while the Nikkei 225-HKEX and Nikkei 225-FTSE 100 may be closer to random-walk behaviour. This study advances the frontier of knowledge on high-frequency data and offers insights into the temporal relationships and scaling properties between financial markets

The role of family and peer relationships in the development of eating disorders among adolescent girls in Buea Municipality

This study aims to investigate the impact of family and peer relationships on the development of eating disorders among adolescent girls in Buea Municipality. The researcher conducted a study involving adolescent girls aged 13 to 19 in order to gain a genuine understanding of the various factors that influence eating disorders in this age group. The researcher employed a descriptive research design and distributed questionnaires to both the caregivers and the adolescent girls. The researcher employed the snowballing sampling technique to select households with adolescent girls, while convenience sampling was utilized to select participants for this research. Questionnaires were administered to a group of 25 caregivers/parents and 25 adolescent girls in order to gather information for the research objectives. After collecting the data, the researcher utilized tables and charts to effectively communicate the findings obtained from the questionnaires. The study findings highlighted the crucial influence of family dynamics, peer pressure, and media exposure on the development of adolescents' eating habits, body image perceptions, and attitudes towards food and weight. A considerable number of participants indicated that their eating behaviors were influenced by their parents, the way their families communicated, and exposure to conversations about dieting and body dissatisfaction. Peer interactions and media exposure were found to have a significant impact on respondents' dietary choices, body satisfaction, and engagement in disordered eating behaviors. Many participants mentioned that peer pressure and social comparison played a role in influencing these aspects of their lives

University Supervisors’ and Student Teachers’ Assessment of the Value of Teaching Practice and School Context Challenges in Kenya

This paper explores University supervisors’ and student teachers’ assessment of the value of teaching practice and school context challenges in Kenya based on a study that examined perceptions on the influence of the school context on the teacher interns performance in Moi University. Data was collected from a sample of thirty one university supervisors and one hundred and forty eight Fourth Year Bachelor of Education students proportionate to the four Degree programmes offered in the School of Education using questionnaires and interviews. Descriptive statistics were computed using the SPSS computer package. It was found that despite the varied teaching practice school characteristics of school administration, the pupils, the teachers and the learning resources presenting a challenge to the student teachers’ translation of theory into practice they were in agreement that teaching practice in the particular schools had made them more competent teachers and that they had adequate opportunity for practice. Though the student teachers generally felt that teaching practice experience was valuable to them irrespective of the school context, the university supervisors considered the Provincial school category more adequate in providing opportunity for practice. In view of this, it is recommended that there be regular evaluation of the teaching practice school contexts with regard to the adequacy of the opportunities they provide to the student teachers for practice so as to eliminate those seriously inadequate. Teaching practice schools should find ways of reducing debilitating factors so as to enhance the teaching-learning process and student teaching. Keywords: School context challenges, university supervisors, student teachers, value of teaching practic

Pebble transducers with unary output

Boja\'nczyk recently initiated an intensive study of deterministic pebble transducers, which are two-way automata that can drop marks (named "pebbles") on their input word, and produce an output word. They describe functions from words to words. Two natural restrictions of this definition have been investigated: marble transducers by Dou\'eneau-Tabot et al., and comparison-free pebble transducers (that we rename here "blind transducers") by Nguy\^en et al. Here, we study the decidability of membership problems between the classes of functions computed by pebble, marble and blind transducers that produce a unary output. First, we show that pebble and marble transducers have the same expressive power when the outputs are unary (which is false over non-unary outputs). Then, we characterize 1-pebble transducers with unary output that describe a function computable by a blind transducer, and show that the membership problem is decidable. These results can be interpreted in terms of automated simplification of programs.Comment: 39 page

Heteroskedastic behaviour of stock prices: Evidence from international financial markets

Traditional financial models assume constant variance in asset returns however, empirical evidence highlights volatility persistence, which are effectively captured by ARCH and GARCH models. The aim of this study was to examine the heteroskedastic behaviour of stock prices across international financial markets. Using a GARCH (1,1) model with a student’s t-distribution, this study analyses daily stock returns from the NYSE, FTSE 100, Nikkei 225, and Shanghai Composite (SSE) between 2018 and 2023. The findings confirm significant autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity in all markets, supporting the notion that financial volatility is dynamic and clustered. Developed markets, such as the NYSE and FTSE 100, exhibit lower baseline volatility but more persistent shocks, indicative of market efficiency and stability. In contrast, emerging markets, particularly SSE, demonstrate higher volatility and greater sensitivity to past shocks, reflecting heightened uncertainty. The results re-iterate the importance of incorporating dynamic volatility models in risk assessments. Given the increasing complexity of global financial systems, this study advocates for enhanced regulatory frameworks and adaptive econometric methodologies to account for evolving market structures and external macroeconomic shocks

Continuous rational functions are deterministic regular

A word-to-word function is rational if it can be realized by a non-deterministic one-way transducer. Over finite words, it is a classical result that any rational function is regular, i.e. it can be computed by a deterministic two-way transducer, or equivalently, by a deterministic streaming string transducer (a one-way automaton which manipulates string registers). This result no longer holds for infinite words, since a non-deterministic one-way transducer can guess, and check along its run, properties such as infinitely many occurrences of some pattern, which is impossible for a deterministic machine. In this paper, we identify the class of rational functions over infinite words which are also computable by a deterministic two-way transducer. It coincides with the class of rational functions which are continuous, and this property can thus be decided. This solves an open question raised in a previous paper of Dave et al.Comment: 41 page