International Journal of Forecasting最新文献

The Elo rating system is a simple and widely used method for calculating players’ skills from paired comparison data. Many have extended it in various ways. Yet the question of updating players’ variances remains to be further explored. In this paper, we address the issue of variance update by using the Laplace approximation for posterior distributions, together with a random walk model for the dynamics of players’ strengths and a lower bound on player variance. The random walk model is motivated by the Glicko system, but here we assume nonidentically distributed increments to deal with player heterogeneity. Experiments on men’s professional matches showed that the prediction accuracy slightly improves when the variance update is performed. They also showed that new players’ strengths may be better captured with the variance update.

The Sharpe-ratio-maximizing portfolio becomes questionable under non-Gaussian returns, and it rules out, by construction, systemic risk, which can negatively affect its out-of-sample performance. In the present work, we develop a new performance ratio that simultaneously addresses these two problems when building optimal portfolios. To robustify the portfolio optimization and better represent extreme market scenarios, we simulate a large number of returns via a Monte Carlo method. This is done by obtaining probabilistic return forecasts through a distributional machine learning approach in a big data setting and then combining them with a fitted copula to generate return scenarios. Based on a large-scale comparative analysis conducted on the US market, the backtesting results demonstrate the superiority of our proposed portfolio selection approach against several popular benchmark strategies in terms of both profitability and minimizing systemic risk. This outperformance is robust to the inclusion of transaction costs.

Forecast reconciliation is a post-forecasting process that involves transforming a set of incoherent forecasts into coherent forecasts which satisfy a given set of linear constraints for a multivariate time series. In this paper, we extend the current state-of-the-art cross-sectional probabilistic forecast reconciliation approach to encompass a cross-temporal framework, where temporal constraints are also applied. Our proposed methodology employs both parametric Gaussian and non-parametric bootstrap approaches to draw samples from an incoherent cross-temporal distribution. To improve the estimation of the forecast error covariance matrix, we propose using multi-step residuals, especially in the time dimension where the usual one-step residuals fail. To address high-dimensionality issues, we present four alternatives for the covariance matrix, where we exploit the two-fold nature (cross-sectional and temporal) of the cross-temporal structure, and introduce the idea of overlapping residuals. We assess the effectiveness of the proposed cross-temporal reconciliation approaches through a simulation study that investigates their theoretical and empirical properties and two forecasting experiments, using the Australian GDP and the Australian Tourism Demand datasets. For both applications, the optimal cross-temporal reconciliation approaches significantly outperform the incoherent base forecasts in terms of the continuous ranked probability score and the energy score. Overall, the results highlight the potential of the proposed methods to improve the accuracy of probabilistic forecasts and to address the challenge of integrating disparate scenarios while coherently taking into account short-term operational, medium-term tactical, and long-term strategic planning.

Probability forecasts for binary outcomes, often referred to as probabilistic classifiers or confidence scores, are ubiquitous in science and society, and methods for evaluating and comparing them are in great demand. We propose and study a triptych of diagnostic graphics focusing on distinct and complementary aspects of forecast performance: Reliability curves address calibration, receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves diagnose discrimination ability, and Murphy curves visualize overall predictive performance and value. A Murphy curve shows a forecast’s mean elementary scores, including the widely used misclassification rate, and the area under a Murphy curve equals the mean Brier score. For a calibrated forecast, the reliability curve lies on the diagonal, and for competing calibrated forecasts, the ROC and Murphy curves share the same number of crossing points. We invoke the recently developed CORP (Consistent, Optimally binned, Reproducible, and Pool-Adjacent-Violators (PAV) algorithm-based) approach to craft reliability curves and decompose a mean score into miscalibration (MCB), discrimination (DSC), and uncertainty (UNC) components. Plots of the $\text{DSC}$ measure of discrimination ability versus the calibration metric $\text{MCB}$ visualize classifier performance across multiple competitors. The proposed tools are illustrated in empirical examples from astrophysics, economics, and social science.

Predicting price movements over a short period is a challenging problem in high-frequency trading. Deep learning methods have recently been used to forecast short-term prices via limit order book (LOB) data. In this paper, we propose a framework to convert LOB data into a series of standard images in 2D matrices and predict the mid-price movements via an image-based convolutional neural network (CNN). The empirical study shows that the image-based CNN model outperforms other traditional machine learning and deep learning methods based on raw LOB data. Our findings suggest that the additional information implicit in LOB images contributes to short-term price forecasting.

This paper proposes a new approach called DeepTVAR that employs a deep learning methodology for vector autoregressive (VAR) modeling and prediction with time-varying parameters. By optimizing the VAR parameters with a long short-term memory (LSTM) network, we retain the Markovian dependence for prediction purposes and make full use of the recurrent structure and powerful learning ability of the LSTM. To ensure the stability of the model, we enforce the causality condition on the autoregressive coefficients using the Ansley–Kohn transform. We provide a simulation study of the estimation ability using realistic curves generated from data. The model is extended to integrated VAR with time-varying parameters, and we compare its forecasting performance with existing methods when applied to energy price data.

This paper is concerned with detecting the presence of out-of-sample predictability in linear predictive regressions with a potentially large set of candidate predictors. We propose a procedure based on out-of-sample MSE comparisons that is implemented in a pairwise manner using one predictor at a time. This results in an aggregate test statistic that is standard normally distributed under the global null hypothesis of no linear predictability. Predictors can be highly persistent, purely stationary, or a combination of both. Upon rejecting the null hypothesis, we introduce a predictor screening procedure designed to identify the most active predictors. An empirical application to key predictors of US economic activity illustrates the usefulness of our methods. It highlights the important forward-looking role played by the series of manufacturing new orders.