{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.021844660194174758, 'fraction_numerical': 0.0024271844660194173, 'mean_word_length': 4.851063829787234, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 0, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 0, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 0, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
Forecasting the intra-day eﬀective bid ask spread by combining density forecasts

ABSTRACT The bid-ask spread refers to the tightness dimension of liquidity and can be used as a proxy for transaction costs. Despite the importance of the bid-ask spread in the financial literature, few studies have investigated its forecastability. We propose a new methodology to predict the bid ask spread by combining density forecasts of two types of models: Multiplicative Errors Models and ARMA-GARCH models. Our method is employed to predict the effective intra-day bid-ask spread series of all shares pertaining to the CAC40 index. Using a one-step-ahead out-of-sample framework, we resort on the Model Confidence Set procedure to classify models and we found that the proposed model appears to beat all the benchmark specifications.