Swarm-based translation-invariant morphological prediction method for financial time series forecasting

In this paper, we present a method to overcome the random walk (RW) dilemma for financial time series forecasting, called swarm-based translation-invariant morphological prediction (STMP) method. It consists of a hybrid model composed of a modular morphological neural network (MMNN) combined with a particle swarm optimizer (PSO), which searches for the best time lags to optimally describe the time series phenomenon, as well as estimates the initial (sub-optimal) parameters of the MMNN (weights, architecture and number of modules). An additional optimization is performed with each particle of the PSO population (a distinct MMNN) using the back-propagation (BP) algorithm. After the MMNN parameters adjustment, we use a behavioral statistical test and a phase fix procedure to adjust time phase distortions observed in financial time series. Finally, we conduct an experimental analysis with the proposed method using four real world stock market time series, where five well-known performance metrics and a fitness function are used to assess the prediction performance. The obtained results are compared with those generated by classical models presented in the literature. (C) 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.