Forecasting Volatility of Turkish Markets: A Comparison of Thin and Thick Models

Volatility of financial markets is an important topic for academics, policy makers and market participants. In this study first I summarized several specifications for the conditional variance and also define some methods for combination of these specifications. Then assuming that the squared returns are the benchmark estimate for actual volatility of the day, I compare all of the models with respect to how much efficient they are to mimic the realized volatility. At the same time I used a VaR approach to compare these forecasts. With the help of these analyses I examine if combination of the forecast could outperform the single models.