The following study aims to examine the success of using option-implied volatility to forecast realized volatility in derivative markets as the preferred market practice. The approach adopted by this study was to compare realized volatility against the monthly average forecast over the period 2005 to 2010. The data selection spanned across currency and commodities markets; short and long-term horizons; before and after the global financial crisis; as well as developed and developing (emerging) markets. To test the success of the forecasting technique, the study used the T-test to test the sample means for any statistical differences between the means of the forecast variable (optionimplied volatility) and the realized variable. The data for the study was obtained from BloombergTM. The findings across all research question showed that this forecasting technique has performed poorly in general for various reasons. There are different arguments in literature as to which forecasting method works best and under what conditions, some practitioners prefer using historical data methods others prefer more technical methods such as the GARCH 1.1. The use of financial derivatives to mitigate financial risk has become a common practice for organizations with a global presence; however market volatility poses a great risk to the financial stability of these organizations. Forecasting volatility continues to be a challenge for market practitioners. / Dissertation (MBA)--University of Pretoria, 2013. / Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) / unrestricted

La spécificité de la tradition monétaire de Henry Thornton, Ralph George Hawtrey, John Maynard Keynes et John Richard Hicks, est de considérer le taux d'intérêt comme une variable influencée par la banque centrale. Ces auteurs peuvent être rattachés à une même tradition monétaire, différente de celle de Knut Wicksell, où le taux d'intérêt est déterminé par une variable réelle: le taux de profit. Dans la tradition de Thornton, le prêt et l'emprunt renvoient une vente et un achat de titres de dette. Ces derniers prennent une forme différente selon la période étudiée. Au dix-neuvième siècle, Thornton proposait que la Banque d'Angleterre contrôle, par des variations de son taux d'escompte, le prix de la liquidité de court-terme, étant la substituabilité des traites commerciales en monnaie. Un siècle plus tard, cette influence était effective. Cependant, au XXe siècle, avec le développement des marchés financiers, d'autre canaux de transmissions de la politique monétaire sont apparus. Bien que négligée par 1 littérature, une des controverses les plus représentatives de cette époque est celle d'Hawtre Keynes et Hicks. Ils conviennent que le taux court est un phénomène monétaire. En revanche, ils ne s'accordent pas sur la nature du taux long. Les débats portent sur la théorie pionnière d Keynes de la structure par terme des taux d'intérêt, les effets d'annonces, ainsi que les limite de l'arbitrage. / The specificity of the monetary tradition of Henry Thornton, Ralph George Hawtrey, John Maynard Keynes and John Richard Hicks is to consider the interest rate as mainly determined by the monetary policy. Those authors are part of the same monetary tradition, different that Knut Wicksell for whom the interest rate is a real variable: the rate of profit. The process of borrowing and lending, in the monetary tradition analyzed in my PhD thesis, corresponds to a sale and a purchase of debts. Debts take a different form according to the period studied. ln the nineteenth century, Thornton wrote that the Bank of England should be able to manage, by varying its discount rate, the price of short-term liquidity, which is the substitution of bills againt money. ln the twentieth century, other transmission channels of monetary policy appeared wit the evolution of financial markets. Although neglected by the literature, one of the most representative controversy at that time was between Hawtrey, Keynes and Hicks. All made a theory in which the short-term rate is a monetary phenomenon. They however disagreed on the nature of the long-term rate. The debate is on Keynes's pioneering theory of the term structur of interest rates, the announcement effects, and the limits to arbitrage.