Entropy of Financial Time Series Due to the Shock of War

Abstract

The concept of entropy is not uniquely relevant to the statistical mechanics but, among others, it can play pivotal role in the analysis of a time series, particularly the stock market data. In this area, sudden events are especially interesting as they describe abrupt data changes with potentially long-lasting effects. Here, we investigate the impact of such events on the entropy of financial time series. As a case study, we assume data of the Polish stock market, in the context of its main cumulative index, and discuss it for the finite time periods before and after outbreak of the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. This analysis allows us to validate the entropy-based methodology in assessing changes in the market volatility, as driven by the extreme external factors. We show that some qualitative features of such market variations can be well captured in terms of the entropy. In particular, the discussed measure appears to highlight differences between data of the two considered timeframes in agreement with the character of their empirical distributions, which is not always the case in terms of the conventional standard deviation. Moreover, the entropy of cumulative index averages, qualitatively, the entropies of composing assets, suggesting capability for describing interdependencies between them. The entropy is also found to exhibit signatures of the upcoming extreme events. To this end, the role of recent war in shaping the current economic situation is briefly discussed.

Keywords

• entropy
• volatility
• information theory
• econophysics
• sudden events
• war