Fractional Brownian motion with stochastic variance: Modeling absolute returns in stock markets

We discuss a model for simulating a long-time memory in time series characterized in addition by a stochastic variance. The model is based on a combination of fractional Brownian motion (FBM) concepts, for dealing with the long-time memory, with an autoregressive scheme with conditional heteroskedasticity (ARCH), responsible for the stochastic variance of the series, and is denoted as FBMARCH. Unlike well-known fractionally integrated autoregressive models, FBMARCH admits finite second moments. The resulting probability distribution functions have power-law tails with exponents similar to ARCH models. This idea is applied to the description of long-time autocorrelations of absolute returns ubiquitously observed in stock markets. © 2008 World Scientific Publishing Company.