Measuring anti-correlations in the nordic electricity spot market by wavelets

We consider the Nordic electricity spot market from mid-1992 to the end of year 2000. This market is found to be well approximated by an anti-persistent self-affine (mean-reverting) walk. It is characterized by a Hurst exponent of H 0.41 over three orders of magnitude in time ranging from days to years. We argue that in order to see such a good scaling behavior, and to locate cross-overs, it is crucial that an analyzing technique is used that decouples scales. This is in our case achieved by utilizing a (multi-scale) wavelet approach. The shortcomings of methods that do not decouple scales are illustrated by applying, to the same data set, the classic R/S- and Fourier techniques, for which scaling regimes and/or positions of cross-overs are hard to define.