Intelligent FinTech Data Mining by Advanced Deep Learning Approaches

Computational Economics - With the progress of financial technology (FinTech), real-time information from FinTech is huge and complicated. For various fields of research, identifying intrinsic...     

Using Gaussian process based kernel classifiers for credit rating forecasting

The subprime mortgage crisis have triggered a significant economic decline over the world. Credit rating forecasting has been a critical issue in the global banking systems. The study trained a Gaussian process based multi-class classifier (GPC), a highly flexible probabilistic kernel machine, using variational Bayesian methods. GPC provides full predictive distributions and model selection simultaneously. During training process, the input features are automatically weighted by their relevances with respect to the output labels. Benefiting from the inherent feature scaling scheme, GPCs outperformed convectional multi-class classifiers and support vector machines (SVMs). In the second stage, conventional SVMs enhanced by feature selection and dimensionality reduction schemes were also compared with GPCs. Empirical results indicated that GPCs still performed the best.     

A case study of applying data mining techniques in an outfitter’s customer value analysis

This study applies K-means method, fuzzy c-means clustering method and bagged clustering algorithm to the analysis of customer value for an outfitter in Taipei, Taiwan. These three techniques bear similar philosophy for data classification. Thus, it would be of interest to know which clustering technique performs best in a real world case of evaluating customer value. Using cluster quality assessment, this study concludes that bagged clustering algorithm outperforms the other two methods. To conclude the analyses, this study also suggests marketing strategies for each cluster based on the results generated by bagged clustering technique.     

Integrating nonlinear graph based dimensionality reduction schemes with SVMs for credit rating forecasting

By integrating graph based nonlinear dimensionality reduction with support vector machines (SVMs), this study develops a novel prediction model for credit ratings forecasting. SVMs have been successfully applied in numerous areas, and have demonstrated excellent performance. However, due to the high dimensionality and nonlinear distribution of the input data, this study employed a kernel graph embedding (KGE) scheme to reduce the dimensionality of input data, and enhance the performance of SVM classifiers. Empirical results indicated that one-vs-one SVM with KGE outperforms other multi-class SVMs and traditional classifiers. Compared with other dimensionality reduction methods the performance improvement owing to KGE is significant.     

Online option price forecasting by using unscented Kalman filters and support vector machines

This study develops a hybrid model that combines unscented Kalman filters (UKFs) and support vector machines (SVMs) to implement an online option price predictor. In the hybrid model, the UKF is used to infer latent variables and make a prediction based on the Black–Scholes formula, while the SVM is employed to model the nonlinear residuals between the actual option prices and the UKF predictions. Taking option data traded in Taiwan Futures Exchange, this study examined the forecasting accuracy of the proposed model, and found that the new hybrid model is superior to pure SVM models or hybrid neural network models in terms of three types of options. This model can help investors for reducing their risk in online trading.     

Combining wavelet-based feature extractions with relevance vector machines for stock index forecasting

Abstract: The relevance vector machine (RVM) is a Bayesian version of the support vector machine, which with a sparse model representation has appeared to be a powerful tool for time-series forecasting. The RVM has demonstrated better performance over other methods such as neural networks or autoregressive integrated moving average based models. This study proposes a hybrid model that combines wavelet-based feature extractions with RVM models to forecast stock indices. The time series of explanatory variables are decomposed using some wavelet bases and the extracted time-scale features serve as inputs of an RVM to perform the non-parametric regression and forecasting. Compared with traditional forecasting models, our proposed method performs best. The root-mean-squared forecasting errors are significantly reduced.