On the predictability of U.S. stock market using machine learning and deep learning techniques

Conventional market theories are considered to be inconsistent approach in modern financial analysis. This thesis focuses mainly on the application of sophisticated machine learning and deep learning techniques in stock market statistical predictability and economic significance over the benchmark conventional efficient market hypothesis and econometric models. Five chapters and three publishable papers were proposed altogether, and each chapter is developed to solve specific identifiable problem(s). Chapter one gives the general introduction of the thesis. It presents the statement of the research problems identified in the relevant literature, the objective of the study and the significance of the study. Chapter two applies a plethora of machine learning techniques to forecast the direction of the U.S. stock market. The notable sophisticated techniques such as regularization, discriminant analysis, classification trees, Bayesian and neural networks were employed. The empirical findings revealed that the discriminant analysis classifiers, classification trees, Bayesian classifiers and penalized binary probit models demonstrate significant outperformance over the binary probit models both statistically and economically, proving significant alternatives to portfolio managers. Chapter three focuses mainly on the application of regression training (RT) techniques to forecast the U.S. equity premium. The RT models demonstrate significant evidence of equity premium predictability both statistically and economically relative to the benchmark historical average, delivering significant utility gains. Chapter four investigates the statistical predictive power and economic significance of financial stock market data by deep learning techniques. Chapter five give the summary, conclusion and present area(s) of further research. The techniques are proven to be robust both statistically and economically when forecasting the equity premium out-of-sample using recursive window method. Overall, the deep learning techniques produced the best result in this thesis. They seek to provide meaningful economic information on mean-variance portfolio investment for investors who are timing the market to earn future gains at minimal risk

Forecasting stock market out-of-sample with regularised regression training techniques

Forecasting stock market out-of-sample is a major concern to researchers in finance and emerging markets. This research focuses mainly on the application of regularised Regression Training (RT) techniques to forecast monthly equity premium out-of-sample recursively with an expanding window method. A broad category of sophisticated regularised RT models involving model complexity were employed. The regularised RT models which include Ridge, Forward-Backward (FOBA) Ridge, Least Absolute Shrinkage and Selection Operator (LASSO), Relaxed LASSO, Elastic Net and Least Angle Regression were trained and used to forecast the equity premium out-of-sample. In this study, the empirical investigation of the Regularised RT models demonstrate significant evidence of equity premium predictability both statistically and economically relative to the benchmark historical average, delivering significant utility gains. Overall, the Ridge gives the best statistical performance evaluation results while the LASSO appeared to be most economical meaningful. They seek to provide meaningful economic information on mean-variance portfolio investment for investors who are timing the market to earn future gains at minimal risk. Thus, the forecasting models appeared to guarantee an investor in a market setting who optimally reallocates a monthly portfolio between equities and risk-free treasury bills using equity premium forecasts at minimal risk

On the Directional Predictability of Equity Premium Using Machine Learning Techniques

This paper applies a plethora of machine learning techniques to forecast the direction of the U.S. equity premium. Our techniques include benchmark binary probit models, classification and regression trees (CART), along with penalized binary probit models. Our empirical analysis reveals that the sophisticated machine learning techniques significantly outperformed the benchmark binary probit forecasting models, both statistically and economically. Overall, the discriminant analysis classifiers are ranked first among all the models tested. Specifically, the high dimensional discriminant analysis (HDDA) classifier ranks first in terms of statistical performance, while the quadratic discriminant analysis (QDA) classifier ranks first in economic performance. The penalized likelihood binary probit models (Least Absolute Shrinkage and Selection Operator, Ridge, Elastic Net) also outperformed the benchmark binary probit models, providing significant alternatives to portfolio managers

Investigating the impact of taxation revenue management and its implications on the sustainability of Nigerian economic growth

This paper examines the significance and contributions of taxation revenue in stimulating economic activities, which leads to economic growth and development. The study is carried out critically to examine the impact of taxation revenue and its sustainability on economic growth of Nigeria from 1994 to 2021, with empirical evidence. Taxation revenue has been a major sustenance of economic growth in both developed and developing countries, as government is saddled with responsibility to cater for its citizens’ wellbeing through the provision of infrastructures, public goods, and services. However, the dwindling tax revenue and it attendant public debts in Nigeria became a subject of research. Findings are made through application of time series secondary data, using regression analysis, correlation, cointegration and Augmented Dicky-Fuller tests. The study uses the quantitative design in its findings. The research gauges the perception of taxpayers and the government’s social responsibilities on tax revenue management. The research results led to four main conclusions. First, value added tax is reported to impact significantly on economic growth. Secondly, custom and excise duty tax is reported to have contributed positively on economic growth. Thirdly, the study revealed petroleum profit tax has negative downturn on economic growth due to the huge subsidy cost of petroleum product bore by government. Finally, the study indicates that company income tax revenue do not impact much on economic growth due to multiple taxation on corporate income which affects savings and investment. The research also looks into the future implications of this findings on the Nigerian tax administration and economic growth and recommends some policy measures to be put in place to hold a more sustainable revenue drive, effective and efficient tax administration, and good management of tax resources in Nigeria. Moreover, suggestions are made for further research

On the Predictability of the Equity Premium Using Deep Learning Techniques

Deep learning is drawing keen attention in contemporary financial research. In this article, the authors investigate the statistical predictive power and economic significance of financial stock market data by using deep learning techniques. In particular, the authors use the equity premium as the response variable and financial variables as predictors. The deep learning techniques used in this study provide useful evidence of statistical predictability and economic significance. Considering the statistical predictive performance of the deep learning models, H2O deep learning (H2ODL) gives the smallest mean-squared forecast error (MSFE), with the corresponding highest cumulative return (CR) and Sharpe ratio (SR) in each of the out-of-sample periods. Specifically, the H2ODL with Rectifier used as the activation function outperformed the other models in this article. In the fusion results, the SAE-with-H2O using the Maxout activation function yields the smallest MSFE with the corresponding highest CR and SR in all of the out-of-sample periods. It is worth noting that the higher the CR, the higher the SR and the lower the MSFE, which concords with a rule of thumb. Overall, the empirical analysis in this study revealed that the SAE-with-H2O using the Maxout activation function produced the best statistically predictive and economically significant results with robustness across all out-of-sample periods