Realized range-based estimation of integrated variance

We provide a set of probabilistic laws for estimating the quadratic variation of continuous semimartingales with realized range-based variance -- a statistic that replaces every squared return of realized variance with a normalized squared range. If the entire sample path of the process is available, and under a set of weak conditions, our statistic is consistent and has a mixed Gaussian limit, whose precision is five times greater than that of realized variance. In practice, of course, inference is drawn from discrete data and true ranges are unobserved, leading to downward bias. We solve this problem to get a consistent, mixed normal estimator, irrespective of non-trading effects. This estimator has varying…