The Forecasting Power of the Volatility Index: Evidence from the Indian Stock Market

Stock market volatility is a measure of risk in investment and it plays a key role in securities pricing and risk management. The paper empirically analyzes the relationship between India VIX and volatility in Indian stock market. India VIX is a measure of implied volatility which reflects markets’ expectation of future short-term stock market volatility. It is a volatility index based on the index option prices of Nifty. The study is based on time series data comprising of daily closing values of CNX Nifty 50 index comprising of 1656 observations from March 2009 to December 2015. The results of the study reveal that India VIX has predictive power for future short-term stock market volatility. It has higher forecasting ability for upward stock market movements as compared to downward movements. Therefore, it is more a bullish indicator. Moreover, the accuracy of forecasts provided by India VIX is higher for low magnitude future price changes relative to higher stock price movements. The current value of India VIX is found to be affected by past period volatility up to one month and it has forecasting ability for next one-month’s volatility which means the volatility in the Indian stock markets can be forecasted for up to 60 days period.