A Variable-Order Regime Switching Model to Identify Significant Patterns in Financial Markets

Abstract

The identification and prediction of complex behaviors in time series are fundamental problems of interest in the field of financial data analysis. Autoregressive (AR) model and Regime switching (RS) models have been used successfully to study the behaviors of financial time series. However, conventional RS models evaluate regimes by using a fixed-order Markov chain and underlying patterns in the data are not considered in their design. In this paper, we propose a novel RS model to identify and predict regimes based on a weighted conditional probability distribution (WCPD) framework capable of discovering and exploiting the significant underlying patterns in time series. Experimental results on stock market data, with 200 stocks, suggest that the structures underlying the financial market behaviors exhibit different dynamics and can be leveraged to better define regimes with superior prediction capabilities than traditional models.