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. (c) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.