Volatility in the Gold Futures Market

We investigate the volatility structure of gold, trading as a futures contract on the Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT) using intraday (high frequency) data from January 1999 to December 2005. Apart from investigating the now familiar GARCH properties we also utilize a rarely used measure of volatility–the Garman Klass estimator – to provide new insights in intraday and interday volatility. This nonparametric measure incorporates the open, close, high and low price within a particular time interval. Both sets of results suggest significant variation across the trading day and week consistent with microstructure theories, although volatility is only slightly positively correlated with volume when measured by tick-count.Garman Klass estimator; volatility; gold; intraday patterns; futures

Maternal Characteristics and Child Problem Behaviors: A Comparison of Foster and Biological Mothers

The purpose of this exploratory study was to compare the parenting behavior, stress and support of foster mothers and biological mothers of young children. A sample of 60 mothers of young children (30 foster mothers, 30 biological mothers) completed measures of parenting behavior, parenting stress, child problem behaviors, and perceived social support. Findings indicated that biological mothers were single and younger than foster mothers. In addition, biological mothers utilized more verbal and corporal discipline than foster mothers, experienced greater parental distress and received less social support for their parenting. Implications of these findings are discussed

London or New York: where and when does the gold price originate?

We investigate the Information Shares (ISs) of the two main centres of gold trading, over a 25-year period, using nonoverlapping 4-month windows. We find that neither London nor New York is dominant in terms of price IS, that the dominant market switches from time to time and that these switches do not appear to be very clearly linkable to macroeconomic or political events

Comparing Teacher Education and Finance Majors’ Agreement with Financial Morality Topics

The authors describe findings of a survey that contains items related to financial morality. They analyzed responses of 382 teacher education majors and finance majors at a Midwestern institution of higher learning. The study found highest agreement with items measuring business responsibilities, and lowest agreement with items related to wealth distribution. It notes significant differences and varying effect sizes among education and finance majors’ interpretation of items concerning business responsibility, wealth distribution, and business management. Analysis of items concerning consumer attitudes and consumer behaviors found significant differences and moderate effect sizes. The authors argue for additional research that explores the concepts related to financial morality and provide suggestions for related study.

The Macroeconomic Determinants of Volatility in Precious Metals Markets

We investigate key macroeconomic factors that impact the price returns of precious metals markets. The markets investigated were gold, silver, platinum and palladium; whereas the macroeconomic factors accommodated business cycle, monetary environment and financial market sentiment factors. The key findings present limited evidence that the same macroeconomic factors jointly influence the volatility processes of the precious metal price series, although there is some evidence of volatility feedback between the precious metals. This finding lends weight to views that individual commodities are too distinct to be considered a single asset class or represented by a single index; a finding of considerable importance for portfolio managers and investors.

The use of audio-visual aids in a public relations program for the Medford public schools

Thesis (M.S.)--Boston University, 195

A Cepheid Distance to NGC 4603 in Centaurus

In an attempt to use Cepheid variables to determine the distance to the Centaurus cluster, we have obtained images of NGC 4603 with the Hubble Space Telescope on 9 epochs using WFPC2 and the F555W and F814W filters. This galaxy has been suggested to lie within the ``Cen30'' portion of the cluster and is the most distant object for which this method has been attempted. Previous distance estimates for Cen30 have varied significantly and some have presented disagreements with the peculiar velocity predicted from redshift surveys, motivating this investigation. Using our observations, we have found 61 candidate Cepheid variable stars; however, a significant fraction of these candidates are likely to be nonvariable stars whose magnitude measurement errors happen to fit a Cepheid light curve of significant amplitude for some choice of period and phase. Through a maximum likelihood technique, we determine that we have observed 43 +/- 7 real Cepheids and that NGC 4603 has a distance modulus of 32.61 +0.11/-0.10 (random, 1 sigma) +0.24/-0.25 (systematic, adding in quadrature), corresponding to a distance of 33.3 Mpc. This is consistent with a number of recent estimates of the distance to NGC 4603 or Cen30 and implies a small peculiar velocity consistent with predictions from the IRAS 1.2 Jy redshift survey if the galaxy lies in the foreground of the cluster.Comment: Accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal. 17 pages with 17 embedded figures and 3 tables using emulateapj.sty. Additional figures and images may be obtained from http://astro.berkeley.edu/~marc/n4603

Near-Infrared Imaging of Early-Type Galaxies IV. The Physical Origins of the Fundamental Plane Scaling Relations

The physical origins of the Fundamental Plane (FP) scaling relations are investigated for early-type galaxies observed at optical and near-infrared wavelengths. The slope for the FP is shown to increase systematically with wavelength from the U-band through the K-band. A distance-independent construction of the observables is described which provides an accurate measurement of the change in the FP slope between any pair of bandpasses. The variation of the FP slope with wavelength is strong evidence of systematic variations in stellar content along the elliptical galaxy sequence. The intercept of the diagnostic relationship between log(D_K/D_V) and log(sigma_0) shows no significant dependence on environment within the uncertainties of the Galactic extinction corrections, demonstrating the universality of the stellar populations contributions at the level of Delta(V-K)=0.03 mag to the zero-point of the global scaling relations. Several other constraints on the properties of early-type galaxies --- the slope of the Mg_2-sigma_0 relation, the effects of stellar populations gradients, and deviations of early-type galaxies from a dynamically homologous family --- are included to construct an empirical, self-consistent model which provides a complete picture of the underlying physical properties which are varying along the early-type galaxy sequence. This empirical approach demonstrates that there are significant systematic variations in both age and metallicity along the elliptical galaxy sequence, and that a small, but systematic, breaking of dynamical homology (or a similar, wavelength independent effect) is required. Predictions for the evolution of the slope of the FP with redshift are described. [abriged]Comment: to appear in The Astronomical Journal; 40 pages, including 10 Postscript figures and 3 tables; uses AAS LaTeX style file