Effective Factors under Stock Market Regimes

Abstract

The Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE) Volatility Index (VIX) is a measurement of volatility in the stock market, which is closely associated with the return of the risk premium. This paper categorized the monthly log returns of VIX by Gaussian Mixture Models (GMM) and investigates the driving factors of VIX among the Equity Market Volatility (EMV) trackers under different regimes using the elastic net linear regression model. As a result of categorization, two regimes in log returns of VIX are found. Regime 1 with a lower mean covers most of the months, while regime 2 with a higher mean captures the months of extreme log returns. In months of both regimes, the policy-related factor significantly and independently affects VIX. Another factor that largely affects VIX in regime 1 is the macroeconomy and other factors have little impact on VIX in regime 1. Infectious disease, policy, and government related factors are more important in affecting VIX in regime 2.