Expert Aggregation for Financial Forecasting

Machine learning algorithms dedicated to financial time series forecasting have gained a lot of interest over the last few years. One difficulty lies in the choice between several algorithms, as their estimation accuracy may be unstable through time. In this paper, we propose to apply an online aggregation-based forecasting model combining several machine learning techniques to build a portfolio which dynamically adapts itself to market conditions. We apply this aggregation technique to the construction of a long-short-portfolio of individual stocks ranked on their financial characteristics and we demonstrate how aggregation outperforms single algorithms both in terms of performances and of stability.

Conditional Versus Adversarial Euler-based Generators For Time Series

We introduce new generative models for time series based on Euler discretization that do not require any pre-stationarization procedure. Specifically, we develop two GAN based methods, relying on the adaptation of Wasserstein GANs (Arjovsky et al., 2017) and DVD GANs (Clark et al., 2019b) to time series. Alternatively, we consider a conditional Euler Generator (CEGEN) minimizing a distance between the induced conditional densities. In the context of It\^o processes, we theoretically validate this approach and demonstrate using the Bures metric that reaching a low loss level provides accurate estimations for both the drift and the volatility terms of the underlying process. Tests on simple models show how the Euler discretization and the use of Wasserstein distance allow the proposed GANs and (more considerably) CEGEN to outperform state-of-the-art Time Series GAN generation( Yoon et al., 2019b) on time structure metrics. In higher dimensions we observe that CEGEN manages to get the correct covariance structures. Finally we illustrate how our model can be combined to a Monte Carlo simulator in a low data context by using a transfer learning technique

Reinforcement Learning in Economics and Finance

Reinforcement learning algorithms describe how an agent can learn an optimal action policy in a sequential decision process, through repeated experience. In a given environment, the agent policy provides him some running and terminal rewards. As in online learning, the agent learns sequentially. As in multi-armed bandit problems, when an agent picks an action, he can not infer ex-post the rewards induced by other action choices. In reinforcement learning, his actions have consequences: they influence not only rewards, but also future states of the world. The goal of reinforcement learning is to find an optimal policy -- a mapping from the states of the world to the set of actions, in order to maximize cumulative reward, which is a long term strategy. Exploring might be sub-optimal on a short-term horizon but could lead to optimal long-term ones. Many problems of optimal control, popular in economics for more than forty years, can be expressed in the reinforcement learning framework, and recent advances in computational science, provided in particular by deep learning algorithms, can be used by economists in order to solve complex behavioral problems. In this article, we propose a state-of-the-art of reinforcement learning techniques, and present applications in economics, game theory, operation research and finance.