Title: | Predicting Daily Probability Distributions Of S&P500 Returns |
Authors: | Weigend, Andreas S. Shi, Shanming |
Keywords: | Forecasting;Density Prediction;Conditional Distribution;Mixture Models;Time Series Analysis;Hidden Markov Models;Gated Experts;Hidden Markov Experts;Model Comparison;Density Evaluation;Computational Finance;Risk Management |
Issue Date: | Aug-1998 |
Publisher: | Stern School of Business, New York University |
Series/Report no.: | IS-98-23 |
Abstract: | Most approaches in forecasting merely try to predict the next value of the time series. In contrast, this paper presents a framework to predict the full probability distribution. It is expressed as a mixture model: the dynamics of the individual states is modeled with so-called "experts" (potentially nonlinear neural networks), and the dynamics between the states is modeled using a hidden Markov approach. The full density predictions are obtained by a weighted superposition of the individual densities of each expert. This model class is called "hidden Markov experts". Results are presented for daily S&P500 data. While the predictive accuracy of the mean does not improve over simpler models, evaluating the prediction of the full density shows a clear out-of-sample improvement both over a simple GARCH(1,l) model (which assumes Gaussian distributed returns) and over a "gated experts" model (which expresses the weighting for each state non-recursively as a function of external inputs). Several interpretations are given: the blending of supervised and unsupervised learning, the discovery of hidden states, the combination of forecasts, the specialization of experts, the removal of outliers, and the persistence of volatility. |
URI: | http://hdl.handle.net/2451/14307 |
Appears in Collections: | IOMS: Information Systems Working Papers |
Files in This Item:
File | Description | Size | Format | |
---|---|---|---|---|
IS-98-23.pdf | 31.23 MB | Adobe PDF | View/Open |
Items in FDA are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.