Friday, May 23, 2008

Machine Learning + Regime Switching = Profitability?

My article on a trading strategy based on regime switching and machine learning techniques is now available on Automated Trader magazine (subscription required). The software I used to research this model is Alphacet Discovery, an industrial-strength backtesting, optimization, and execution platform.

9 comments:

  1. Anything you can share about the platform itself? It looks very expensive.

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  2. Alphacet Discovery has an integrated historical high-frequency equity and futures database for backtesting, and a suite of machine learning algorithms (e.g. neural net and genetic algorithm) for parameter optimization. Many of these operations can be done with the mouse only, without writing any programming codes.

    Furthermore, once a trading algorithm is backtested and optimized, it can be immediately switched on for paper/real trading with no further work.

    It is primarily targeted to institutional investors.

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  4. I am wondering how you solve the optimization problem in real time regime-switch models. Usually the optimization for estimating one models is at seconds level for each input. Unless you use simple regime-switch models like threshold / homo-markovian models, but I really do not believe these static regime-switch models can achieve any stable profit.

    Also, neutral network models face significant over-fitting problem, which leads to high frequent rebalancing. I only agree that neutral network works in field such as FX where the transaction cost is small.

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  5. Is Alphacet Inc. closed?
    Its website seems doesn't exists.

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  6. Is Alphacet Inc. closed?
    Its websites doesn't exists!

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  7. Hi Man,
    Yes, Alphacet is closed. Try Deltix, Progress Apama, or Quanthouse instead.
    Ernie

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  8. Hi Dr. Chan,

    The magazine link no longer works - is the article still available anywhere? I'm trying to better understand the simple regime-switching strategy discussed for Alphacet Discovery, specifically what exactly are the inputs and outputs of the perceptron. It looks like this post is talking about the same subject.

    Rolling optimization is something that I've had in the back of my mind for a while but without a clear idea on how to implement it, so I'd love to hear more.


    Thanks,
    Jonathan

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  9. Hi Jonathan,
    Alphacet no longer exists. For the latest method of predicting regime shift and using that to optimize a trading strategy, please check out the second edition of my book Quantitative Trading, especially a technique we called Conditional Parameter Optimization.
    Best,
    Ernie

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