# Random walk under changing conditions

I have a random walk where by at certain times or conditions the increments follow one distribution, and then another distribution under different conditions - how can I model this random walk (states can have fixed or random probabilities)

For example, An economy has a bull and bear state with transition probabilties of staying the same as 80% and moving to the other state as 20%. The increments of a random walk of exchange rates follow a t-distribution in a bull state and a lognormal distribution in a bear state. How would you go about modelling the exchange rate random walk?

It sounds like a Hidden Markov model will do exactly what you want. A HMM assumes there is a discrete set of latent (unobservable) states which evolve according to a discrete time Markov process and generate observations which depend only on the current state. Thus a HMM is defined by a set of latent states $Q$, an initial distribution $p(q)$, a transition probability $p(q | q^\prime)$, and an emission probability $p(o|q)$.

Given a state hidden state sequence $q_1 q_2 \cdots q_T$ and observation seqeunce $o_1 o_2 \cdots o_T$ the joint probability can be calculated as

$$p(q_1, \ldots, q_T, o_1, \ldots, o_T) = p(q_1)P(o_1|q_1)\prod_{t=2}^T p(q_t|q_{t-1})P(o_t|q_t).$$

For your particular example you would have 2 latent states (one for bear and the other for bull), with the emission distribution being t and normal respectively.

• @user40124 alto's answer sounds right if one takes the process of increments as the "observale" process – Stéphane Laurent Mar 28 '14 at 16:32

The increments of a random walk of exchange rates follow a t-distribution in a bull state and a lognormal distribution in a bear state

If by increment you mean the change from step to step, I don't understand how this can follow a lognormal distribution since these values will all be positive. The below R code uses a t distribution with 10 df and center=1 in the bull state and a normal distribution with mean=-1 and sd=3 in the bear state. Points are blue when in the bull state, and red in bear.

state<-1
duration<-1000
x<-matrix(nrow=duration, ncol=3)
x[1,]<-cbind(1,state,100)

for(t in 2:duration){
transition<-rbinom(1,1,.2)

if(transition==1){
if(state==1){
state=0
}else{
state=1
}
}
if(state==0){
x.new<-x[t-1,3]+rnorm(1,-1,2)
}else{
x.new<-x[t-1,3]+rt(1,10,1)
}
x[t,]<-cbind(t,state,x.new)

plot(x[,1],x[,3],
xlab="Time", ylab="Exchange Rate",
col=c("Red","Blue")[1+x[,2]])
}

• Apologies, it's the logged increments im using and they follow t and normal. Thanks for this, is there anything more theoretical I can read/look up about this type of problem? – user40124 Mar 27 '14 at 18:13
• @user40124 Sorry this is not my field and I haven't looked at the literature. The above is just the simple way I thought of. One idea that may be good is to look at the historical data to decide what is bull/bear state and divide the increments into those two categories, then sample from these empirical distributions rather than using t and normal. – Livid Mar 27 '14 at 18:18
• @user40124 you should edit the corrected information into your question to clarify your question (I'd suggest by adding a better framed question to the bottom to reflect this clarifying information). – Glen_b -Reinstate Monica Mar 27 '14 at 23:38
• I'm afraid i'll find it difficult to be clearer 'mathematically' as this is just some conceptual thinking i've been doing and asked the question to see if anyone could give a more direction and clarity as to what this type of process might be. I'll break my thinking down as much as I can; – user40124 Mar 28 '14 at 12:51
• @Livid, your code simulates a Hidden Markov model, which is very well known. I describe HMMs in my answer. – alto Mar 28 '14 at 19:48