CRUDE OIL PRICE FORECASTING WITH TEI@I METHODOLOGY

The difficulty in crude oil price forecasting, due to inherent complexity, has attracted much attention of academic researchers and business practitioners. Various methods have been tried to solve the problem of forecasting crude oil prices. However, all of the existing models of prediction can not meet practical needs. Very recently, Wang and Yu proposed a new methodology for handling complex systems-TEI@I methodology by means of a systematic integration of text mining, econometrics and intelligent techniques.Within the framework of TEI@I methodology, econometrical models are used to model the linear components of crude oil price time series (i.e., main trends) while nonlinear components of crude oil price time series (i.e., error terms) are modelled by using artificial neural network (ANN) models. In addition, the impact of irregular and infrequent future events on crude oil price is explored using web-based text mining (WTM) and rule-based expert systems (RES) techniques. Thus, a fully novel nonlinear integrated forecasting approach with error correction and judgmental adjustment is formulated to improve prediction performance within the framework of the TEI@I methodology. The proposed methodology and the novel forecasting approach are illustrated via an example.

TIME SERIES FORECASTING WITH MULTIPLE CANDIDATE MODELS:SELECTING OR COMBINING?

Various mathematical models have been commonly used in time series analysis and forecasting. In these processes, academic researchers and business practitioners often come up against two important problems. One is whether to select an appropriate modeling approach for prediction purposes or to combine these different individual approaches into a single forecast for the different/dissimilar modeling approaches. Another is whether to select the best candidate model for forecasting or to mix the various candidate models with different parameters into a new forecast for the same/similar modeling approaches. In this study, we propose a set of computational procedures to solve the above two issues via two judgmental criteria. Meanwhile, in view of the problems presented in the literature, a novel modeling technique is also proposed to overcome the drawbacks of existing combined forecasting methods. To verify the efficiency and reliability of the proposed procedure and modeling technique, the simulations and real data examples are conducted in this study.The results obtained reveal that the proposed procedure and modeling technique can be used as a feasible solution for time series forecasting with multiple candidate models.

AN INTERVAL METHOD FOR STUDYING THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE AUSTRALIAN DOLLAR EXCHANGE RATE AND THE GOLD PRICE

This paper proposes an interval method to explore the relationship between the exchange rate of Australian dollar against US dollar and the gold price, using weekly, monthly and quarterly data. With the interval method, interval sample data are formed to present the volatility of variables. The ILS approach is extended to multi-model estimation and the computational schemes are provided. The empirical evidence suggests that the ILS estimates well characterize how the exchange rate relates to the gold price, both in the long-run and short-run. The comparison between the interval and point methods indicates that the difference between the OLS and the ILS estimates is increasing from weekly data to quarterly data, since the lowest frequency point data lost the most information of volatility.

AN EMPIRICAL ANALYSIS OF SAMPLING INTERVAL FOR EXCHANGE RATE FORECASTING WITH NEURAL NETWORKS

Artificial neural networks (ANNs) have been widely used as a promising alternative approach for forecast task because of their several distinguishing features. In this paper, we investigate the effect of different sampling intervals on predictive performance of ANNs in forecasting exchange rate time series. It is shown that selection of an appropriate sampling interval would permit the neural network to model adequately the financial time series. Too short or too long a sampling interval does not provide good forecasting accuracy. In addition, we discuss the effect of forecasting horizons and input nodes on the prediction performance of neural networks.