The use of data mining and neural networks for forecasting stock market returns

It has been widely accepted by many studies that non-linearity exists in the financial markets and that neural networks can be effectively used to uncover this relationship. Unfortunately, many of these studies fail to consider alternative forecasting techniques, the relevance of input variables, or the performance of the models when using different trading strategies. This paper introduces an information gain technique used in machine learning for data mining to evaluate the predictive relationships of numerous financial and economic variables. Neural network models for level estimation and classification are then examined for their ability to provide an effective forecast of future values. A cross-validation technique is also employed to improve the generalization ability of several models. The results show that the trading strategies guided by the classification models generate higher risk-adjusted profits than the buy-and-hold strategy, as well as those guided by the level-estimation based forecasts of the neural network and linear regression models.     

Predicting stock index increments by neural networks: The role of trading volume under different horizons

Recent studies show that there is a significant bidirectional nonlinear causality between stock return and trading volume. In this research, we reinforce this statement and the results presented in some earlier literatures and further investigate whether trading volume can significantly improve the prediction performance of neural networks under short-, medium-and long-term forecasting horizons. An application of component-based neural networks is used in forecasting one-step ahead stock index increments. The models are also augmented by the addition of different combinations of indices’ and component stocks’ trading volumes as inputs to form more general ex-ante forecasting models. Neural networks are trained with the data of stock returns and volumes from NASDAQ, DJIA and STI indices. Results indicate that augmented neural network models with trading volumes lead to improvements, at different extents, in forecasting performance under different terms of forecasting horizon. Empirical results indicate that trading volumes lead to modest improvements on the performance of stock index increments prediction under medium-and long-term horizons.     

Maximum and minimum stock price forecasting of Brazilian power distribution companies based on artificial neural networks

Time series forecasting has been widely used to determine future prices of stocks, and the analysis and modeling of finance time series is an important task for guiding investors’ decisions and trades. Nonetheless, the prediction of prices by means of a time series is not trivial and it requires a thorough analysis of indexes, variables and other data. In addition, in a dynamic environment such as the stock market, the non-linearity of the time series is a pronounced characteristic, and this immediately affects the efficacy of stock price forecasts. Thus, this paper aims at proposing a methodology that forecasts the maximum and minimum day stock prices of three Brazilian power distribution companies, which are traded in the São Paulo Stock Exchange BM&FBovespa. When compared to the other papers already published in the literature, one of the main contributions and novelty of this paper is the forecast of the range of closing prices of Brazilian power distribution companies’ stocks. As a result of its application, investors may be able to define threshold values for their stock trades. Moreover, such a methodology may be of great interest to home brokers who do not possess ample knowledge to invest in such companies. The proposed methodology is based on the calculation of distinct features to be analysed by means of attribute selection, defining the most relevant attributes to predict the maximum and minimum day stock prices of each company. Then, the actual prediction was carried out by Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs), which had their performances evaluated by means of Mean Absolute Error (MAE), Mean Absolute Percentage Error (MAPE) and Root Mean Square Error (RMSE) calculations. The proposed methodology for addressing the problem of prediction of maximum and minimum day stock prices for Brazilian distribution companies is effective. In addition, these results were only possible to be achieved due to the combined use of attribute selection by correlation analysis and ANNs.     

New results concerning the exponential stability of delayed neural networks with impulses

Employing the matrix measure approach and Lyapunov function, the author studies the global exponential stability of delayed neural networks with impulses in this paper. Some novel and sufficient conditions are given to guarantee the global exponential stability of the equilibrium point for such delayed neural networks with impulses. Finally, three examples are given to show the effectiveness of the results obtained here.     

A new result on global exponential robust stability of neural networks with time-varying delays

In this paper, the global exponential robust stability of neural networks with ume-varying delays is investigated. By using nonnegative matrix theory and the Halanay inequality, a new sufficient condition for global exponential robust stability is presented. It is shown that the obtained result is different from or improves some existing ones reported in the literatures. Finally, some numerical examples and a simulation are given to show the effectiveness of the obtained result.     

基于遗传退火三次指数平滑的期货预测研究

为更准确地对期货价格进行预测分析,提出了一种对三次指数平滑法的平滑初值和平滑参数值进行自适应选取的预测方法.该方法根据样本预测误差平方和最小来自适应地调整平滑参数与平滑初值,以避免对其进行主观选取,并将此方法应用于期货价格的预测中.实验结果表明,该方法与单独的三次指数平滑法相比,对于期货价格预测的准确率有所提高,可以得到比较有效的预测值.     

Nonlinear multivariable adaptive control using multiple models and neural networks

In this paper, a multivariable adaptive control approach is proposed for a class of unknown nonlinear multivariable discrete-time dynamical systems. By introducing a k-difference operator, the nonlinear terms of the system are not required to be globally bounded. The proposed adaptive control scheme is composed of a linear adaptive controller, a neural-network-based nonlinear adaptive controller and a switching mechanism. The linear controller can assure boundedness of the input and output signals, and the neural network nonlinear controller can improve performance of the system. By using the switching scheme between the linear and nonlinear controllers, it is demonstrated that improved performance and stability can be achieved simultaneously. Theory analysis and simulation results are presented to show the effectiveness of the proposed method.     

A Bayesian regularized artificial neural network for stock market forecasting

In this paper a Bayesian regularized artificial neural network is proposed as a novel method to forecast financial market behavior. Daily market prices and financial technical indicators are utilized as inputs to predict the one day future closing price of individual stocks. The prediction of stock price movement is generally considered to be a challenging and important task for financial time series analysis. The accurate prediction of stock price movements could play an important role in helping investors improve stock returns. The complexity in predicting these trends lies in the inherent noise and volatility in daily stock price movement. The Bayesian regularized network assigns a probabilistic nature to the network weights, allowing the network to automatically and optimally penalize excessively complex models. The proposed technique reduces the potential for overfitting and overtraining, improving the prediction quality and generalization of the network. Experiments were performed with Microsoft Corp. and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. stock to determine the effectiveness of the model. The results indicate that the proposed model performs as well as the more advanced models without the need for preprocessing of data, seasonality testing, or cycle analysis.     

Improved exponential stability criteria for recurrent neural networks with time-varying discrete and distributed delays

In this paper, the problem of the global exponential stability analysis is investigated for a class of recurrent neural networks (RNNs) with time-varying discrete and distributed delays. Due to a novel technique when estimating the upper bound of the derivative of Lyapunov functional, we establish new exponential stability criteria in terms of LMIs. It is shown that the obtained criteria can provide less conservative results than some existing ones. Numerical examples are given to show the effectiveness of the proposed results.     

A computer program for time series forecasting using single and double exponential smoothing techniques

This paper presents a microcomputer program for time series forecasting. The program has been developed in GW-BASIC for Zenith 150 microcomputers which are IBM PC compatible. It utilizes Single exponential smoothing, Adaptive-response-rate single exponential smoothing, and Brown's double exponential smoothing methods to forecast the future values of a given time series. The program produces plots of the original time series and forecasted series as well as forecasting errors. It computes 90% and 95% confidence intervals for forecasted values and calculates the following statistics: Mean squared error, Mean absolute percentage error, Mean absolute error, Durbin-Watson statistic, and Theil's U statistic.     

Robot discrete adaptive control based on dynamic inversion using dynamical neural networks

A stable discrete time adaptive control approach using dynamic neural networks (DNNs) is developed in this paper for the trajectory tracking of a robotic manipulator with unknown nonlinear dynamics. By using dynamic inversion constructed by a DNN, the assumption under which the system state should be on a compact set can be removed. This assumption is usually required in neuro-adaptive control. The NN-based variable structure control is designed to guarantee the stability and improve the dynamic performance of the closed-loop system. The proposed control scheme ensures the global stability and desired tracking as well.     

Artificial neural networks and bankruptcy forecasting: a state of the art

The use of neural networks in finance began by the end of the 1980s and by the beginning of the 1990s, it developed specific applications related to forecasting on the failure of companies. In order to highlight the evolution of this research stream, we have retained and analysed 30 studies in which the authors use neural networks to solve companies’ classification problems (healthy and failing firms). This review of all these works gives us the opportunity to stress upon future trends in bankruptcy forecasting research.

Predicting stock market returns from malicious attacks: A comparative analysis of vector autoregression and time-delayed neural networks

With the growing importance of Internet-based businesses, malicious code attacks on information technology infrastructures have been on the rise. Prior studies have indicated that these malicious attacks are associated with detrimental economic effects on the attacked firms. On the other hand, we conjecture that more intense malicious attacks boost the stock price of information security firms. Furthermore, we use artificial neural networks and vector autoregression analyses as complementary methods to study the relationship between the stock market returns of information security firms and the intensity of malicious attacks, computed as the product of the number of malicious attacks and their severity levels. A major contribution of this work is the resulting time-delayed artificial neural network model that allows stock return predictions and is particularly useful as an investment decision support system for hedge funds and other investors, whose portfolios are at risk of losing market value during malicious attacks.     

Combining nonlinear independent component analysis and neural network for the prediction of Asian stock market indexes

With the economic successes of several Asian economies and their increasingly important roles in the global financial market, the prediction of Asian stock markets has becoming a hot research area. As Asian stock markets are highly dynamic and exhibit wide variation, it may more realistic and practical that assumed the stock indexes of Asian stock markets are nonlinear mixture data. In this research, a time series prediction model by combining nonlinear independent component analysis (NLICA) and neural network is proposed to forecast Asian stock markets. NLICA is a novel feature extraction technique to find independent sources from observed nonlinear mixture data where no relevant data mixing mechanisms are available. In the proposed method, we first use NLICA to transform the input space composed of original time series data into the feature space consisting of independent components representing underlying information of the original data. Then, the ICs are served as the input variables of the neural network to build prediction model. Among the Asian stock markets, Japanese and China’s stock markets are the biggest two in Asia and they respectively represent the two types of stock markets. Therefore, in order to evaluate the performance of the proposed approach, the Nikkei 225 closing index and Shanghai B-share closing index are used as illustrative examples. Experimental results show that the proposed forecasting model not only improves the prediction accuracy of the neural network approach but also outperforms the three comparison methods. The proposed stock index prediction model can be therefore a good alternative for Asian stock market indexes.     

细胞神经网络指数稳定及周期解的新判据 *

利用细胞神经网络激励函数的特点,对连接权矩阵进行适当分块,结合线性矩阵不等式分析技巧,得到 了指数稳定及周期解存在的新判据,得到的新判据具有更弱的保守性。仿真结果表明,新判据是有效的。     

Relaxed delay-dependent exponential stability condition for a class of neural networks with polytopic uncertainties and distributed delays

The global robust exponential stability of a class of neural networks with polytopic uncertainties and distributed delays is investigated in this paper.Parameter-dependent Lypaunov-Krasovskii functionals and free-weighting matrices are employed to obtain sufficient condition that guarantee the robust global exponential stability of the equilibrium point of the considered neural networks.The derived sufficient condition is proposed in terms of a set of relaxed linear matrix inequalities (LMIs),which can be checked easily by recently developed algorithms solving LMIs.A numerical example is given to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed criteria.     

Hopfield网络的全局指数稳定性

在研究Hopfield神经网络时通常都假设输出响应函数是光滑的增函数.但实际应用中遇到的大多数函数都是非光滑函数.因此,本文将通常论文中Hopfield神经网络的输出响应函数连续可微的假设削弱为满足L ipschitz条件.通过引入Lyapunov函数的方法,证明了Hopfield神经网络全局指数收敛的一个充分性定理.并且由此定理获得该类网络全局指数稳定的几个判据.这定理与判据是近期相应文献主要结果的极大改进.