Quantec news

Consumer Vulnerability Drifts Sideways

Mon, 22 Jul 2013 11:54:28 +0200

Quantec's Consumer Vulnerability Index (CVI) for South Africa has been at or below the 50-point index value for the past five quarters. A movement above 50 would indicate a higher than average vulnerability, while a value below 50 indicates a lower than average vulnerability.

Bumpy road ahead

Mon, 15 Jul 2013 11:03:35 +0200

The South African passenger vehicle market faces several key challenges over the coming months. Most notable amongst them is our current GDP growth outlook. The South African economy only recorded a GDP growth rate of 0.9% in the first quarter of this year. In addition, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) recently revised their 2013 GDP growth forecast for South Africa down, from 2.8% to 2%. New CO2 emission taxes on vehicle sales and increasingly indebted South African consumers also add to concerns. Furthermore, although the current interest rate environment still supports new vehicle sales, this may change in the future. Factors including a weakening Rand, electricity and fuel price hikes and high wage demands are all contributing to higher long-term inflation and may force the South African Reserve Bank to act. An increase in interest rates will force cash-strapped consumers to reassess their expenses and vehicles sales will suffer as a result.

RATS online course on ARCH/GARCH and Volatility Models

Wed, 26 Jun 2013 09:45:07 +0200

Estima have released the 6th e-course in their series of e-courses. The latest course is on "ARCH/GARCH and Volatility Models". The course is divided in 2 parts. Roughly half the course concerns the use of the existing GARCH instruction, determining the best specification, handling the estimation and doing tests of the adequacy of the model. The second half examines various extensions to the GARCH framework that require either more general likelihood maximization, simulation methods, or both, with detailed discussions of replications of papers which have been popular downloads by RATS users.

These courses go into much more detail than the main RATS documentation. Each course costs US$50. Courses can be purchased on the Estima website and are e-mailed.

Each course consists of a PDF workbook, RATS programs and data which focusses in detail on one topic. The PDF workbooks are 150 to 300 pages and cover 15-30 useful examples in detail, explaining the RATS instructions used to accomplish the task. When applicable, the relevant theory surrounding a calculation is also provided.

Stata 13 announced

Mon, 10 Jun 2013 10:54:58 +0200

Stata 13 ships June 24

New — Treatment effects, Multilevel mixed-effects GLM, Power and sample size, Multilevel SEM with generalized outcomes, Forecasting, Long strings and BLOBs, and much more.

Are we seeing the long anticipated structural break in oil prices?

Wed, 22 May 2013 11:45:45 +0200

During the first quarter of 2013, South African motorists paid some 13,5% more for fuel compared with a year ago. March and April saw further increases of, on average, R1,56 per litre on 95 octane petrol before the latest 73c reduction which became effective in May 2013. The rand's depreciation against the dollar was mostly to blame for this situation, but the oil price which had remained stubbornly high despite a struggling world economy (Europe is still in recession) of course also played a big role.