Multi-Scale Markov Switching GARCH

Abstract: Financial volatility exhibits substantial non-stationarity, making single-regime models inadequate for characterising changing market conditions. This paper proposes a triple-timeframe Markov-Switching GARCH (MS-GARCH) framework for volatility regime detection in EUR/USD across daily, four-hour, and hourly horizons. Three independent AR(1)-MS-GARCH models are estimated to capture macro, meso, and micro regime dynamics, while Filardo-style time-varying transition probabilities (TVTP) are incorporated at the shorter horizons through composite stress indicators. The resulting regime probabilities are combined through an outer-product construction into a 27-state cross-scale probability tensor. Using EUR/USD data from 2015-2025, the framework produces statistically distinct Calm, Turbulent, and Crisis regimes and achieves superior out-of-sample volatility forecasting performance relative to a conventional GARCH benchmark. The results suggest that volatility dynamics contain meaningful structure across multiple timescales and that modelling these scales separately provides a more informative representation of market conditions than a single-timescale approach.