Search arXivSearch

arXiv · 2211.05415

Variance of entropy for testing time-varying regimes with an application to meme stocks

Abstract

Shannon entropy is the most common metric to measure the degree of randomness of time series in many fields, ranging from physics and finance to medicine and biology. Real-world systems may be in general non stationary, with an entropy value that is not constant in time. The goal of this paper is to propose a hypothesis testing procedure to test the null hypothesis of constant Shannon entropy for time series, against the alternative of a significant variation of the entropy between two subsequent periods. To this end, we find an unbiased approximation of the variance of the Shannon entropy's estimator, up to the order O(n^(-4)) with n the sample size. In order to characterize the variance of the estimator, we first obtain the explicit formulas of the central moments for both the binomial and the multinomial distributions, which describe the distribution of the Shannon entropy. Second, we find the optimal length of the rolling window used for estimating the time-varying Shannon entropy by optimizing a novel self-consistent criterion based on the counting of significant variations of entropy within a time window. We corroborate our findings by using the novel methodology to test for time-varying regimes of entropy for stock price dynamics, in particular considering the case of meme stocks in 2020 and 2021. We empirically show the existence of periods of market inefficiency for meme stocks. In particular, sharp increases of prices and trading volumes correspond to statistically significant drops of Shannon entropy.

Explore related subjects

Keep this discovery

Explore connections, maps & timelines

BibTeXRIS

Andrey Shternshis, Piero Mazzarisi. 2023-06-07. Variance of entropy for testing time-varying regimes with an application to meme stocks. https://arxiv.org/abs/2211.05415

Cite the original work for its findings. Save a collection to share your selection of sources.

KEEP EXPLORING

Related papers

The Endogenous Constraint: Hysteresis, Stagflation, and the Structural Inhibition of Monetary Velocity in the Bitcoin Network (2016-2025)

Bitcoin operates as a macroeconomic paradox: it combines a strictly predetermined, inelastic monetary issuance schedule with a stochastic, highly elastic demand for scarce block space. This paper empirically validates the Endogenous Constraint Hypothesis, positing that protocol-level throughput limits generate a non-linear negative feedback loop between network friction and base-layer monetary velocity. Using a verified Transaction Cost Index (TCI) derived from Blockchain.com on-chain data and Hansen's (2000) threshold regression, we identify a definitive structural break at the 90th percentile of friction (TCI ~ 1.63). The analysis reveals a bifurcation in network utility: while the network exhibits robust velocity growth of +15.44% during normal regimes, this collapses to +6.06% during shock regimes, yielding a statistically significant Net Utility Contraction of -9.39% (p = 0.012). Crucially, Instrumental Variable (IV) tests utilizing Hashrate Variation as a supply-side instrument fail to detect a significant relationship in a linear specification (p=0.196), confirming that the velocity constraint is strictly a regime-switching phenomenon rather than a continuous linear function. Furthermore, we document a "Crypto Multiplier" inversion: high friction correlates with a +8.03% increase in capital concentration per entity, suggesting that congestion forces a substitution from active velocity to speculative hoarding.

q-fin.ST

Wasserstein-Barycentric Interaction Fields for Spatial Factor Models: Evidence from Language-Model Representations

Spatial asset-pricing models take the structure of inter-firm interaction as given. We infer that structure from firms' information environments using language-model representations. Each firm is represented as a distribution of news-article embeddings, and a target-anchored Wasserstein barycentric reconstruction selects, for every firm, the weighted combination of other firms whose information footprints jointly reconstruct its own. The resulting directed peer field enters a quadratic exposure-adjustment model in which the spatial coefficient indexes alignment with information peers relative to stand-alone exposure. Using fields built from 2018-2022 news and frozen before 2023-2026 returns, we find that the constructed field organizes cross-sectional return dependence beyond the Fama-French five factors and momentum and raises the held-out mean Gaussian quasi-log score relative to a matched factor-only model. Because factor betas are unchanged, the gain lies in residual covariance. The field outperforms pairwise distance weighting and equal weighting of the same peers, and remains incrementally informative beside persistent news co-mentions under the primary factor-conditioned specification. Linear and quadratic transport generate nearly identical peer-return signals and equivalent held-out predictive performance. The barycentric-proximity ordering persists across alternative embedding models, and a pre-period encoder preserves the held-out advantage under the primary specification. Language-model representations thus serve as a measurement instrument for latent inter-firm information structure in capital markets.

q-fin.ST

Stealing profits: Spread-based temporal hierarchy forecasting for day-ahead electricity markets

Day-ahead electricity price forecasts support trading and storage decisions, but for battery arbitrage predicting intraday price spreads is more relevant than predicting individual hourly prices. Here we show that a temporal hierarchy forecasting (THieF) framework that jointly reconciles forecasts of hourly electricity prices and all intraday price spreads consistently improves performance across two major European electricity markets and three different forecasting architectures. Using five years of out-of-sample data from Germany and Spain, we obtain accuracy improvements of up to 19.7% and profit gains of up to 10.4% relative to unreconciled hourly price forecasts. The gains persist even for a highly accurate pretrained TabPFN foundation model. Our results demonstrate that exploiting coherent relationships between economically relevant forecasting targets can improve both predictive accuracy and decision value, and that better statistical forecasts do not necessarily imply better economic decisions.

q-fin.ST