nep-for New Economics Papers
on Forecasting
Issue of 2024‒07‒22
three papers chosen by
Rob J Hyndman, Monash University


  1. Optimizing Sales Forecasts through Automated Integration of Market Indicators By Lina D\"oring; Felix Grumbach; Pascal Reusch
  2. The Hybrid Forecast of S&P 500 Volatility ensembled from VIX, GARCH and LSTM models By Natalia Roszyk; Robert Ślepaczuk
  3. GARCHX-NoVaS: A Model-Free Approach to Incorporate Exogenous Variables By Kejin Wu; Sayar Karmakar; Rangan Gupta

  1. By: Lina D\"oring; Felix Grumbach; Pascal Reusch
    Abstract: Recognizing that traditional forecasting models often rely solely on historical demand, this work investigates the potential of data-driven techniques to automatically select and integrate market indicators for improving customer demand predictions. By adopting an exploratory methodology, we integrate macroeconomic time series, such as national GDP growth, from the \textit{Eurostat} database into \textit{Neural Prophet} and \textit{SARIMAX} forecasting models. Suitable time series are automatically identified through different state-of-the-art feature selection methods and applied to sales data from our industrial partner. It could be shown that forecasts can be significantly enhanced by incorporating external information. Notably, the potential of feature selection methods stands out, especially due to their capability for automation without expert knowledge and manual selection effort. In particular, the Forward Feature Selection technique consistently yielded superior forecasting accuracy for both SARIMAX and Neural Prophet across different company sales datasets. In the comparative analysis of the errors of the selected forecasting models, namely Neural Prophet and SARIMAX, it is observed that neither model demonstrates a significant superiority over the other.
    Date: 2024–05
    URL: https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2406.07564&r=
  2. By: Natalia Roszyk (University of Warsaw, Faculty of Economic Sciences, Quantitative Finance Research Group); Robert Ślepaczuk (University of Warsaw, Faculty of Economic Sciences, Quantitative Finance Research Group, Department of Quantitative Finance and Machine Learning)
    Abstract: Predicting the S&P 500 index's volatility is crucial for investors and financial analysts as it helps in assessing market risk and making informed investment decisions. Volatility represents the level of uncertainty or risk related to the size of changes in a security's value, making it an essential indicator for financial planning. This study explores four methods to improve the accuracy of volatility forecasts for the S&P 500: the established GARCH model, known for capturing historical volatility patterns; an LSTM network that utilizes past volatility and log returns; a hybrid LSTM-GARCH model that combines the strengths of both approaches; and an advanced version of the hybrid model that also factors in the VIX index to gauge market sentiment. This analysis is based on a daily dataset that includes data for S&P 500 and VIX index, covering the period from January 3, 2000, to December 21, 2023. Through rigorous testing and comparison, we found that machine learning approaches, particularly the hybrid LSTM models, significantly outperform the traditional GARCH model. The inclusion of the VIX index in the hybrid model further enhances its forecasting ability by incorporating real-time market sentiment. The results of this study offer valuable insights for achieving more accurate volatility predictions, enabling better risk management and strategic investment decisions in the volatile environment of the S&P 500.
    Keywords: volatility forecasting, LSTM-GARCH, S&P 500 index, hybrid forecasting models, VIX index, machine learning, financial time series analysis, walk-forward process, hyperparameters tuning, deep learning, recurrent neural networks
    JEL: C4 C45 C55 C65 G11
    Date: 2024
    URL: https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:war:wpaper:2024-13&r=
  3. By: Kejin Wu (Department of Mathematics, University of California San Diego); Sayar Karmakar (Department of Statistics, University of Florida); Rangan Gupta (Department of Economics, University of Pretoria)
    Abstract: In this work, we explore the forecasting ability of a recently proposed normalizing and variance-stabilizing (NoVaS) transformation with the possible inclusion of exogenous variables. From an applied point-of-view, extra knowledge such as fundamentals- and sentiments-based information could be beneficial to improve the prediction accuracy of market volatility if they are incorporated into the forecasting process. In the classical approach, these models including exogenous variables are typically termed GARCHX-type models. Being a Model-free prediction method, NoVaS has generally shown more accurate, stable and robust (to misspecifications) performance than that compared to classical GARCH-type methods. This motivates us to extend this framework to the GARCHX forecasting as well. We derive the NoVaS transformation needed to include exogenous covariates and then construct the corresponding prediction procedure. We show through extensive simulation studies that bolster our claim that the NoVaS method outperforms traditional ones, especially for long-term time aggregated predictions. We also provide an interesting data analysis to exhibit how our method could possibly shed light on the role of geopolitical risks in forecasting volatility in national stock market indices for three different countries in Europe.
    Keywords: Volatility forecasting, Model-free prediction, GARCH, GARCHX
    JEL: C32 C53 C63 Q54
    Date: 2024–06
    URL: https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pre:wpaper:202425&r=

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