Periodicity and scaling of eigenmodes in an emerging market

We investigate periodic, aperiodic and scaling behaviour of eigenmodes, i.e. daily price fluctuation time-series derived from eigenvectors, of correlation matrices of shares listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE) from January 1993 to December 2002. Periodic, or calendar, components are investigated by spectral analysis. We demonstrate that calendar effects are limited to eigenmodes which correspond to eigenvalues outside the Wishart range. Aperiodic and scaling behaviour of the eigenmodes are investigated by using rescaled-range methods and detrended fluctuation analysis (DFA). We find that the eigenmodes which correspond to eigenvalues within the Wishart range are dominated by noise effects. In particular, we find that interpolating missing data or illiquid trading days with a zero-order hold introduces high frequency noise and leads to the overestimation of uncorrected (for serial correlation) Hurst exponents. DFA exponents of the eigenmodes suggest an absence of long-term memory.