Forward volatility is a measure of the implied volatility of a financial instrument over a period in the future, extracted from the term structure of volatility (which refers to how implied volatility differs for related financial instruments with different maturities).

Underlying principle

The variance is the square of differences of measurements from the mean divided by the number of samples. The standard deviation is the square root of the variance. The standard deviation of the continuously compounded returns of a financial instrument is called volatility.

corresponds to the spot volatility for that underlying, for the specific term. A collection of such volatilities forms a volatility term structure, similar to the yield curve. Just as forward rates can be derived from a yield curve, forward volatilities can be derived from a given term structure of volatility.

Derivation

Given that the underlying random variables for non overlapping time intervals are independent, the variance is additive (see variance). So for yearly time slices we have the annualized volatility as

where

1. scales the variance so it is a yearly one

   .

To ease computation and get a non-recursive representation, we can also express the forward volatility directly in terms of spot volatilities:

:

,

to

.

Example

we get

.

References