Eur. Phys. J. B 73, 3-11 (2010)
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjb/e2009-00286-0

The use of dynamical networks to detect the hierarchical organization of financial market sectors

¹ Applied Mathematics, Research School of Physical Sciences, The Australian National University, 0200 Canberra, Australia
² Department of Mathematics, King's College, The Strand, London, WC2R 2LS, UK
³ School of Physical Sciences, University of Kent, Canterbury, Kent CT2 7NH, UK

Corresponding author: tomaso.aste@anu.edu.au

Received: 27 February 2009
Revised: 22 May 2009
Published online: 18 August 2009

Abstract

Two kinds of filtered networks: minimum spanning trees (MSTs) and planar maximally filtered graphs (PMFGs) are constructed from dynamical correlations computed over a moving window. We study the evolution over time of both hierarchical and topological properties of these graphs in relation to market fluctuations. We verify that the dynamical PMFG preserves the same hierarchical structure as the dynamical MST, providing in addition a more significant and richer structure, a stronger robustness and dynamical stability. Central and peripheral stocks are differentiated by using a combination of different topological measures. We find stocks well connected and central; stocks well connected but peripheral; stocks poorly connected but central; stocks poorly connected and peripheral. It results that the Financial sector plays a central role in the entire system. The robustness, stability and persistence of these findings are verified by changing the time window and by performing the computations on different time periods. We discuss these results and the economic meaning of this hierarchical positioning.