Previous research primarily characterized price movements according to time intervals, resulting in temporal discontinuity and overlooking crucial activities in financial markets. Directional Change (DC) is an alternative approach to sampling price data, highlighting significant points while blurring out noise details in price movements. However, traditional DC treated the thresholds of upward and downward trends with distinct intrinsic patterns as equivalent and preset them as fixed values, which are dependent on the subjective judgment of traders. To enhance the generalization performance of this methodology, we improved DC by introducing a modified threshold selection technique. Specifically, we addressed upward and downward trends distinctly by incorporating a decay coefficient. Further, we simultaneously optimized the threshold and decay coefficient using the Bayesian Optimization Algorithm (BOA). Additionally, we recognized the abnormal market state by regime change detection based on the Hidden Markov Model (RCD-HMM) to reduce the risk. Our Intelligent Trading Algorithm (ITA) was constructed based on above methods and the experiments were carried out on tick data from diverse currency pairs in the forex market. The experimental results showed a significant increase in profit and reduction in risk of DC-based trading strategies, which demonstrated the effectiveness of our proposed methods.
We extend a Discrete Time Random Walk (DTRW) numerical scheme to simulate the anomalous diffusion of financial market orders in a simulated order book. Here using random walks with Sibuya waiting times to include a time-dependent stochastic forcing function with non-uniformly sampled times between order book events in the setting of fractional diffusion. This models the fluid limit of an order book by modelling the continuous arrival, cancellation and diffusion of orders in the presence of information shocks. We study the impulse response and stylised facts of orders undergoing anomalous diffusion for different forcing functions and model parameters. Concretely, we demonstrate the price impact for flash limit-orders and market orders and show how the numerical method generate kinks in the price impact. We use cubic spline interpolation to generate smoothed price impact curves. The work promotes the use of non-uniform sampling in the presence of diffusive dynamics as the preferred simulation method.
This paper evaluates six strategies for mitigating imbalanced data: oversampling, undersampling, ensemble methods, specialized algorithms, class weight adjustments, and a no-mitigation approach referred to as the baseline. These strategies were tested on 58 real-life binary imbalanced datasets with imbalance rates ranging from 3 to 120. We conducted a comparative analysis of 10 under-sampling algorithms, 5 over-sampling algorithms, 2 ensemble methods, and 3 specialized algorithms across eight different performance metrics: accuracy, area under the ROC curve (AUC), balanced accuracy, F1-measure, G-mean, Matthew's correlation coefficient, precision, and recall. Additionally, we assessed the six strategies on altered datasets, derived from real-life data, with both low (3) and high (100 or 300) imbalance ratios (IR). The principal finding indicates that the effectiveness of each strategy significantly varies depending on the metric used. The paper also examines a selection of newer algorithms within the categories of specialized algorithms, oversampling, and ensemble methods. The findings suggest that the current hierarchy of best-performing strategies for each metric is unlikely to change with the introduction of newer algorithms.
The consistency of the maximum likelihood estimator for mixtures of elliptically-symmetric distributions for estimating its population version is shown, where the underlying distribution $P$ is nonparametric and does not necessarily belong to the class of mixtures on which the estimator is based. In a situation where $P$ is a mixture of well enough separated but nonparametric distributions it is shown that the components of the population version of the estimator correspond to the well separated components of $P$. This provides some theoretical justification for the use of such estimators for cluster analysis in case that $P$ has well separated subpopulations even if these subpopulations differ from what the mixture model assumes.
In this paper we propose and analyse a method for estimating three quantities related to an Asian option: the fair price, the cumulative distribution function, and the probability density. The method involves preintegration with respect to one well chosen integration variable to obtain a smooth function of the remaining variables, followed by the application of a tailored lattice Quasi-Monte Carlo rule to integrate over the remaining variables.
The ability to synthesize realistic data in a parametrizable way is valuable for a number of reasons, including privacy, missing data imputation, and evaluating the performance of statistical and computational methods. When the underlying data generating process is complex, data synthesis requires approaches that balance realism and simplicity. In this paper, we address the problem of synthesizing sequential categorical data of the type that is increasingly available from mobile applications and sensors that record participant status continuously over the course of multiple days and weeks. We propose the paired Markov Chain (paired-MC) method, a flexible framework that produces sequences that closely mimic real data while providing a straightforward mechanism for modifying characteristics of the synthesized sequences. We demonstrate the paired-MC method on two datasets, one reflecting daily human activity patterns collected via a smartphone application, and one encoding the intensities of physical activity measured by wearable accelerometers. In both settings, sequences synthesized by paired-MC better capture key characteristics of the real data than alternative approaches.
Causal representation learning algorithms discover lower-dimensional representations of data that admit a decipherable interpretation of cause and effect; as achieving such interpretable representations is challenging, many causal learning algorithms utilize elements indicating prior information, such as (linear) structural causal models, interventional data, or weak supervision. Unfortunately, in exploratory causal representation learning, such elements and prior information may not be available or warranted. Alternatively, scientific datasets often have multiple modalities or physics-based constraints, and the use of such scientific, multimodal data has been shown to improve disentanglement in fully unsupervised settings. Consequently, we introduce a causal representation learning algorithm (causalPIMA) that can use multimodal data and known physics to discover important features with causal relationships. Our innovative algorithm utilizes a new differentiable parametrization to learn a directed acyclic graph (DAG) together with a latent space of a variational autoencoder in an end-to-end differentiable framework via a single, tractable evidence lower bound loss function. We place a Gaussian mixture prior on the latent space and identify each of the mixtures with an outcome of the DAG nodes; this novel identification enables feature discovery with causal relationships. Tested against a synthetic and a scientific dataset, our results demonstrate the capability of learning an interpretable causal structure while simultaneously discovering key features in a fully unsupervised setting.
The optimization of open-loop shallow geothermal systems, which includes both design and operational aspects, is an important research area aimed at improving their efficiency and sustainability and the effective management of groundwater as a shallow geothermal resource. This paper investigates various approaches to address optimization problems arising from these research and implementation questions about GWHP systems. The identified optimization approaches are thoroughly analyzed based on criteria such as computational cost and applicability. Moreover, a novel classification scheme is introduced that categorizes the approaches according to the types of groundwater simulation model and the optimization algorithm used. Simulation models are divided into two types: numerical and simplified (analytical or data-driven) models, while optimization algorithms are divided into gradient-based and derivative-free algorithms. Finally, a comprehensive review of existing approaches in the literature is provided, highlighting their strengths and limitations and offering recommendations for both the use of existing approaches and the development of new, improved ones in this field.
The accessibility of spatially distributed data, enabled by affordable sensors, field, and numerical experiments, has facilitated the development of data-driven solutions for scientific problems, including climate change, weather prediction, and urban planning. Neural Partial Differential Equations (Neural PDEs), which combine deep learning (DL) techniques with domain expertise (e.g., governing equations) for parameterization, have proven to be effective in capturing valuable correlations within spatiotemporal datasets. However, sparse and noisy measurements coupled with modeling approximation introduce aleatoric and epistemic uncertainties. Therefore, quantifying uncertainties propagated from model inputs to outputs remains a challenge and an essential goal for establishing the trustworthiness of Neural PDEs. This work evaluates various Uncertainty Quantification (UQ) approaches for both Forward and Inverse Problems in scientific applications. Specifically, we investigate the effectiveness of Bayesian methods, such as Hamiltonian Monte Carlo (HMC) and Monte-Carlo Dropout (MCD), and a more conventional approach, Deep Ensembles (DE). To illustrate their performance, we take two canonical PDEs: Burger's equation and the Navier-Stokes equation. Our results indicate that Neural PDEs can effectively reconstruct flow systems and predict the associated unknown parameters. However, it is noteworthy that the results derived from Bayesian methods, based on our observations, tend to display a higher degree of certainty in their predictions as compared to those obtained using the DE. This elevated certainty in predictions suggests that Bayesian techniques might underestimate the true underlying uncertainty, thereby appearing more confident in their predictions than the DE approach.
Complete observation of event histories is often impossible due to sampling effects such as right-censoring and left-truncation, but also due to reporting delays and incomplete event adjudication. This is for example the case during interim stages of clinical trials and for health insurance claims. In this paper, we develop a parametric method that takes the aforementioned effects into account, treating the latter two as partially exogenous. The method, which takes the form of a two-step M-estimation procedure, is applicable to multistate models in general, including competing risks and recurrent event models. The effect of reporting delays is derived via thinning, extending existing results for Poisson models. To address incomplete event adjudication, we propose an imputed likelihood approach which, compared to existing methods, has the advantage of allowing for dependencies between the event history and adjudication processes as well as allowing for unreported events and multiple event types. We establish consistency and asymptotic normality under standard identifiability, integrability, and smoothness conditions, and we demonstrate the validity of the percentile bootstrap. Finally, a simulation study shows favorable finite sample performance of our method compared to other alternatives, while an application to disability insurance data illustrates its practical potential.
Accelerated life-tests (ALTs) are applied for inferring lifetime characteristics of highly reliable products. In particular, step-stress ALTs increase the stress level at which units under test are subject at certain pre-fixed times, thus accelerating product wear and inducing its failure. In some cases, due to cost or product nature constraints, continuous monitoring of devices is infeasible but the units are inspected for failures at particular inspection time points. In such setups, the ALT response is interval-censored. Furthermore, when a test unit fails, there are often more than one fatal cause for the failure, known as competing risks. In this paper, we assume that all competing risks are independent and follow an exponential distribution with scale parameter depending on the stress level. Under this setup, we present a family of robust estimators based on the density power divergence, including the classical maximum likelihood estimator as a particular case. We derive asymptotic and robustness properties of the MDPDE, showing its consistency for large samples. Based on these MDPDEs, estimates of the lifetime characteristics of the product as well as estimates of cause-specific lifetime characteristics have been developed. Direct, transformed and bootstrap confidence intervals for the mean lifetime to failure, reliability at a mission time, and distribution quantiles are proposed, and their performance is empirically compared through simulations. Besides, the performance of the MDPDE family has been examined through an extensive numerical study and the methods of inference discussed here are illustrated with a real-data example regarding electronic devices.