• International Area Studies Review
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.25-40
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• 2010

Accurate forecasting of volatility is of considerable interest in financial volatility research, particularly in regard to portfolio allocation, option pricing and risk management because volatility is equal to market risk. So, we attempted to delineate a model with good ability to forecast and identified stylized features of volatility, with a focus on volatility persistence or long memory in the Australian futures market. In this context, we assessed the long-memory property in the volatility of index futures contracts using three conditional volatility models, namely the GARCH, IGARCH and FIGARCH models. We found that the FIGARCH model better captures the long-memory property than do the GARCH and IGARCH models. Additionally, we found that the FIGARCH model provides superior performance in one-day-ahead volatility forecasts. As discussed in this paper, the FIGARCH model should prove a useful technique in forecasting the long-memory volatility in the Australian index futures market.