Fig. 4 extends figures 1 and 2 by performing a sensitivity analysis
on the simple log-periodic formula (continuous lines in figures
1 and 2), in order to assess the reliability and range of uncertainty
of the prediction. Using the fit shown in black solid lines in
figure 2, we have generated 10 realizations of an artificial S&P500
by adding GARCH noise to the black solid line. GARCH means "generalized
auto-regressive conditional heteroskedasticity". It is a process
often taken as a benchmark in the financial industry and describes
the fact that volatility is persistent. The innovations of the
used GARCH noise have been drawn from a Student distribution with
3 degrees of freedom with a variance equal to that of the residuals
of the fit of the real data by the black continuous curve, to ensure
the agreement between these synthetic time series and the known
properties of the empirical distribution of returns. Using the
GARCH noise improves on our previous synthetic tests of last month
by using a more realistic correlated noise process. The fits are
shown as the bundle of 10 curves in magenta. This bundle of predictions
is coherent and suggests a good robustness of the prediction. The
typical width of the blue dots give a sense of the variability
that can be expected around this most probable scenario. The real
S&P500 price trajectory is shown as the red wiggly line.
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