Jumps and stochastic volatility in crude oil futures prices using conditional moments of integrated volatility

We evaluate alternative models of the volatility of commodity futures prices based on high-frequency intraday data from the crude oil futures markets for the October 2001–December 2012 period. These models are implemented with a simple GMM estimator that matches sample moments of the realized volatility to the corresponding population moments of the integrated volatil-ity. Models incorporating both stochastic volatility and jumps in the returns series are compared on the basis of the overall fit of the data over the full sample period and subsamples. We also find that jumps in the returns series add to the accuracy of volatility forecasts. (JEL: G13, Q41) Key words: stochastic volatility, commodity futures prices, crude oil future