XGBoost

Interpretable Machine Learning for Macro Alpha: A News Sentiment Case Study ArXiv ID: 2505.16136 “View on arXiv” Authors: Yuke Zhang Abstract This study introduces an interpretable machine learning (ML) framework to extract macroeconomic alpha from global news sentiment. We process the Global Database of Events, Language, and Tone (GDELT) Project’s worldwide news feed using FinBERT – a Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers (BERT) based model pretrained on finance-specific language – to construct daily sentiment indices incorporating mean tone, dispersion, and event impact. These indices drive an XGBoost classifier, benchmarked against logistic regression, to predict next-day returns for EUR/USD, USD/JPY, and 10-year U.S. Treasury futures (ZN). Rigorous out-of-sample (OOS) backtesting (5-fold expanding-window cross-validation, OOS period: c. 2017-April 2025) demonstrates exceptional, cost-adjusted performance for the XGBoost strategy: Sharpe ratios achieve 5.87 (EUR/USD), 4.65 (USD/JPY), and 4.65 (Treasuries), with respective compound annual growth rates (CAGRs) exceeding 50% in Foreign Exchange (FX) and 22% in bonds. Shapley Additive Explanations (SHAP) affirm that sentiment dispersion and article impact are key predictive features. Our findings establish that integrating domain-specific Natural Language Processing (NLP) with interpretable ML offers a potent and explainable source of macro alpha. ...

Optimizing Fintech Marketing: A Comparative Study of Logistic Regression and XGBoost ArXiv ID: 2412.16333 “View on arXiv” Authors: Unknown Abstract As several studies have shown, predicting credit risk is still a major concern for the financial services industry and is receiving a lot of scholarly interest. This area of study is crucial because it aids financial organizations in determining the probability that borrowers would default, which has a direct bearing on lending choices and risk management tactics. Despite the progress made in this domain, there is still a substantial knowledge gap concerning consumer actions that take place prior to the filing of credit card applications. The objective of this study is to predict customer responses to mail campaigns and assess the likelihood of default among those who engage. This research employs advanced machine learning techniques, specifically logistic regression and XGBoost, to analyze consumer behavior and predict responses to direct mail campaigns. By integrating different data preprocessing strategies, including imputation and binning, we enhance the robustness and accuracy of our predictive models. The results indicate that XGBoost consistently outperforms logistic regression across various metrics, particularly in scenarios using categorical binning and custom imputation. These findings suggest that XGBoost is particularly effective in handling complex data structures and provides a strong predictive capability in assessing credit risk. ...

S&P 500 Trend Prediction ArXiv ID: 2412.11462 “View on arXiv” Authors: Unknown Abstract This project aims to predict short-term and long-term upward trends in the S&P 500 index using machine learning models and feature engineering based on the “101 Formulaic Alphas” methodology. The study employed multiple models, including Logistic Regression, Decision Trees, Random Forests, Neural Networks, K-Nearest Neighbors (KNN), and XGBoost, to identify market trends from historical stock data collected from Yahoo! Finance. Data preprocessing involved handling missing values, standardization, and iterative feature selection to ensure relevance and variability. For short-term predictions, KNN emerged as the most effective model, delivering robust performance with high recall for upward trends, while for long-term forecasts, XGBoost demonstrated the highest accuracy and AUC scores after hyperparameter tuning and class imbalance adjustments using SMOTE. Feature importance analysis highlighted the dominance of momentum-based and volume-related indicators in driving predictions. However, models exhibited limitations such as overfitting and low recall for positive market movements, particularly in imbalanced datasets. The study concludes that KNN is ideal for short-term alerts, whereas XGBoost is better suited for long-term trend forecasting. Future enhancements could include advanced architectures like Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) networks and further feature refinement to improve precision and generalizability. These findings contribute to developing reliable machine learning tools for market trend prediction and investment decision-making. ...

Explainable AI in Request-for-Quote ArXiv ID: 2407.15038 “View on arXiv” Authors: Unknown Abstract In the contemporary financial landscape, accurately predicting the probability of filling a Request-For-Quote (RFQ) is crucial for improving market efficiency for less liquid asset classes. This paper explores the application of explainable AI (XAI) models to forecast the likelihood of RFQ fulfillment. By leveraging advanced algorithms including Logistic Regression, Random Forest, XGBoost and Bayesian Neural Tree, we are able to improve the accuracy of RFQ fill rate predictions and generate the most efficient quote price for market makers. XAI serves as a robust and transparent tool for market participants to navigate the complexities of RFQs with greater precision. ...

A Novel Decision Ensemble Framework: Customized Attention-BiLSTM and XGBoost for Speculative Stock Price Forecasting ArXiv ID: 2401.11621 “View on arXiv” Authors: Unknown Abstract Forecasting speculative stock prices is essential for effective investment risk management that drives the need for the development of innovative algorithms. However, the speculative nature, volatility, and complex sequential dependencies within financial markets present inherent challenges which necessitate advanced techniques. This paper proposes a novel framework, CAB-XDE (customized attention BiLSTM-XGB decision ensemble), for predicting the daily closing price of speculative stock Bitcoin-USD (BTC-USD). CAB-XDE framework integrates a customized bi-directional long short-term memory (BiLSTM) with the attention mechanism and the XGBoost algorithm. The customized BiLSTM leverages its learning capabilities to capture the complex sequential dependencies and speculative market trends. Additionally, the new attention mechanism dynamically assigns weights to influential features, thereby enhancing interpretability, and optimizing effective cost measures and volatility forecasting. Moreover, XGBoost handles nonlinear relationships and contributes to the proposed CAB-XDE framework robustness. Additionally, the weight determination theory-error reciprocal method further refines predictions. This refinement is achieved by iteratively adjusting model weights. It is based on discrepancies between theoretical expectations and actual errors in individual customized attention BiLSTM and XGBoost models to enhance performance. Finally, the predictions from both XGBoost and customized attention BiLSTM models are concatenated to achieve diverse prediction space and are provided to the ensemble classifier to enhance the generalization capabilities of CAB-XDE. The proposed CAB-XDE framework is empirically validated on volatile Bitcoin market, sourced from Yahoo Finance and outperforms state-of-the-art models with a MAPE of 0.0037, MAE of 84.40, and RMSE of 106.14. ...

Desenvolvimento de modelo para predição de cotações de ação baseada em análise de sentimentos de tweets ArXiv ID: 2309.06538 “View on arXiv” Authors: Unknown Abstract Training machine learning models for predicting stock market share prices is an active area of research since the automatization of trading such papers was available in real time. While most of the work in this field of research is done by training Neural networks based on past prices of stock shares, in this work, we use iFeel 2.0 platform to extract 19 sentiment features from posts obtained from microblog platform Twitter that mention the company Petrobras. Then, we used those features to train XBoot models to predict future stock prices for the referred company. Later, we simulated the trading of Petrobras’ shares based on the model’s outputs and determined the gain of R$88,82 (net) in a 250-day period when compared to a 100 random models’ average performance. ...

Short-Term Stock Price Forecasting using exogenous variables and Machine Learning Algorithms ArXiv ID: 2309.00618 “View on arXiv” Authors: Unknown Abstract Creating accurate predictions in the stock market has always been a significant challenge in finance. With the rise of machine learning as the next level in the forecasting area, this research paper compares four machine learning models and their accuracy in forecasting three well-known stocks traded in the NYSE in the short term from March 2020 to May 2022. We deploy, develop, and tune XGBoost, Random Forest, Multi-layer Perceptron, and Support Vector Regression models. We report the models that produce the highest accuracies from our evaluation metrics: RMSE, MAPE, MTT, and MPE. Using a training data set of 240 trading days, we find that XGBoost gives the highest accuracy despite running longer (up to 10 seconds). Results from this study may improve by further tuning the individual parameters or introducing more exogenous variables. ...