Incorporating feature selection method into support vector regression for stock index forecasting

Stock index forecasting is one of the most difficult tasks that financial organizations, firms and private investors have to face. Support vector regression (SVR) has become a popular alternative in stock index forecasting tasks due to its generalization capability in obtaining a unique solution. However, the major limitation of SVR is that it cannot capture the relative importance of independent variables to the dependent variable when many potential independent variables are considered. This study incorporates feature selection method and SVR for building stock index forecasting model. The proposed model uses multivariate adaptive regression splines (MARS), an effective nonlinear and nonparametric regression methodology, to identify important forecasting variables. The obtained significant predictor variables are then served as the inputs for the SVR model. Experimental results reveal that the obtained important variables from MARS can improve the forecasting performance of the SVR models. Moreover, the MARS results provide useful information about the relationship between the selected predictor variables and stock index through the obtained basis functions, important predictor variables and the MARS prediction function. Hence, the proposed stock index forecasting model can generate good forecasting performance and exhibits the capability of identifying significant predictor variables, which provide valuable information for further investment decisions/strategies.