380,483 research outputs found
Representation learning in finance
Finance studies often employ heterogeneous datasets from different sources with different structures and frequencies. Some data are noisy, sparse, and unbalanced with missing values; some are unstructured, containing text or networks. Traditional techniques often struggle to combine and effectively extract information from these datasets. This work explores representation learning as a proven machine learning technique in learning informative embedding from complex, noisy, and dynamic financial data. This dissertation proposes novel factorization algorithms and network modeling techniques to learn the local and global representation of data in two specific financial applications: analysts’ earnings forecasts and asset pricing.
Financial analysts’ earnings forecast is one of the most critical inputs for security valuation and investment decisions. However, it is challenging to fully utilize this type of data due to the missing values. This work proposes one matrix-based algorithm, “Coupled Matrix Factorization,” and one tensor-based algorithm, “Nonlinear Tensor Coupling and Completion Framework,” to impute missing values in analysts’ earnings forecasts and then use the imputed data to predict firms’ future earnings. Experimental analysis shows that missing value imputation and representation learning by coupled matrix/tensor factorization from the observed entries improve the accuracy of firm earnings prediction. The results confirm that representing financial time-series in their natural third-order tensor form improves the latent representation of the data. It learns high-quality embedding by overcoming information loss of flattening data in spatial or temporal dimensions.
Traditional asset pricing models focus on linear relationships among asset pricing factors and often ignore nonlinear interaction among firms and factors. This dissertation formulates novel methods to identify nonlinear asset pricing factors and develops asset pricing models that capture global and local properties of data. First, this work proposes an artificial neural network “auto enco der” based model to capture the latent asset pricing factors from the global representation of an equity index. It also shows that autoencoder effectively identifies communal and non-communal assets in an index to facilitate portfolio optimization. Second, the global representation is augmented by propagating information from local communities, where the network determines the strength of this information propagation. Based on the Laplacian spectrum of the equity market network, a network factor “Z-score” is proposed to facilitate pertinent information propagation and capture dynamic changes in network structures. Finally, a “Dynamic Graph Learning Framework for Asset Pricing” is proposed to combine both global and local representations of data into one end-to-end asset pricing model. Using graph attention mechanism and information diffusion function, the proposed model learns new connections for implicit networks and refines connections of explicit networks. Experimental analysis shows that the proposed model incorporates information from negative and positive connections, captures the network evolution of the equity market over time, and outperforms other state-of-the-art asset pricing and predictive machine learning models in stock return prediction.
In a broader context, this is a pioneering work in FinTech, particularly in understanding complex financial market structures and developing explainable artificial intelligence models for finance applications. This work effectively demonstrates the application of machine learning to model financial networks, capture nonlinear interactions on data, and provide investors with powerful data-driven techniques for informed decision-making
Deep Learning can Replicate Adaptive Traders in a Limit-Order-Book Financial Market
We report successful results from using deep learning neural networks (DLNNs)
to learn, purely by observation, the behavior of profitable traders in an
electronic market closely modelled on the limit-order-book (LOB) market
mechanisms that are commonly found in the real-world global financial markets
for equities (stocks & shares), currencies, bonds, commodities, and
derivatives. Successful real human traders, and advanced automated algorithmic
trading systems, learn from experience and adapt over time as market conditions
change; our DLNN learns to copy this adaptive trading behavior. A novel aspect
of our work is that we do not involve the conventional approach of attempting
to predict time-series of prices of tradeable securities. Instead, we collect
large volumes of training data by observing only the quotes issued by a
successful sales-trader in the market, details of the orders that trader is
executing, and the data available on the LOB (as would usually be provided by a
centralized exchange) over the period that the trader is active. In this paper
we demonstrate that suitably configured DLNNs can learn to replicate the
trading behavior of a successful adaptive automated trader, an algorithmic
system previously demonstrated to outperform human traders. We also demonstrate
that DLNNs can learn to perform better (i.e., more profitably) than the trader
that provided the training data. We believe that this is the first ever
demonstration that DLNNs can successfully replicate a human-like, or
super-human, adaptive trader operating in a realistic emulation of a real-world
financial market. Our results can be considered as proof-of-concept that a DLNN
could, in principle, observe the actions of a human trader in a real financial
market and over time learn to trade equally as well as that human trader, and
possibly better.Comment: 8 pages, 4 figures. To be presented at IEEE Symposium on
Computational Intelligence in Financial Engineering (CIFEr), Bengaluru; Nov
18-21, 201
Modeling Financial Time Series with Artificial Neural Networks
Financial time series convey the decisions and actions of a population of human actors over time. Econometric and regressive models have been developed in the past decades for analyzing these time series. More recently, biologically inspired artificial neural network models have been shown to overcome some of the main challenges of traditional techniques by better exploiting the non-linear, non-stationary, and oscillatory nature of noisy, chaotic human interactions. This review paper explores the options, benefits, and weaknesses of the various forms of artificial neural networks as compared with regression techniques in the field of financial time series analysis.CELEST, a National Science Foundation Science of Learning Center (SBE-0354378); SyNAPSE program of the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (HR001109-03-0001
Models of Inquiry-based Science Outreach to Urban Schools
NOTE: This is a large file, 15.5mb in size! A primary obstacle to urban precollege geoscience education is limited access to inquiry-based geoscience experiences that are engaging and relevant to students' lives. Opportunities are reduced by the common misconception that the geosciences are less relevant to urban audiences and by the financial limitations of many urban school districts. This paper describes three primary obstacles to improving urban geoscience education and discusses two outreach programs developed by the Paleontological Research Institution (PRI) that have been offered to urban elementary school classrooms in central New York. Educational levels: Graduate or professional
Forecasting price increments using an artificial Neural Network
Financial forecasting is a difficult task due to the intrinsic complexity of
the financial system. In the present paper we relate our experience using
neural nets as financial time series forecast method. In particular we show
that a neural net able to forecast the sign of the price increments with a
success rate slightly above 50 percent can be found.Comment: 12 pages, 5 figures (to be published in Advances in Complex Systems,
as the Proceeding of the WE-Heraeus Workshop on "Economic Dynamics from the
Physics Point of View", Bad Honnef, Germany, March 27-30, 200
Augmented bilinear network for incremental multi-stock time-series classification
Deep Learning models have become dominant in tackling financial time-series analysis problems, overturning conventional machine learning and statistical methods. Most often, a model trained for one market or security cannot be directly applied to another market or security due to differences inherent in the market conditions. In addition, as the market evolves over time, it is necessary to update the existing models or train new ones when new data is made available. This scenario, which is inherent in most financial forecasting applications, naturally raises the following research question: How to efficiently adapt a pre-trained model to a new set of data while retaining performance on the old data, especially when the old data is not accessible? In this paper, we propose a method to efficiently retain the knowledge available in a neural network pre-trained on a set of securities and adapt it to achieve high performance in new ones. In our method, the prior knowledge encoded in a pre-trained neural network is maintained by keeping existing connections fixed, and this knowledge is adjusted for the new securities by a set of augmented connections, which are optimized using the new data. The auxiliary connections are constrained to be of low rank. This not only allows us to rapidly optimize for the new task but also reduces the storage and run-time complexity during the deployment phase. The efficiency of our approach is empirically validated in the stock mid-price movement prediction problem using a large-scale limit order book dataset. Experimental results show that our approach enhances prediction performance as well as reduces the overall number of network parameters.Peer reviewe
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