Intelligent Financial Portfolio Composition Based On Evolutionary Computation Strategies

The management of financial portfolios or funds constitutes a widely known problematic in financial markets which normally requires a rigorous analysis in order to select the most profitable assets. This subject is becoming popular among computer scientists which try to adapt known Intelligent Computation techniques to the market’s domain. This book proposes a potential system based on Genetic Algorithms, which aims to manage a financial portfolio by using technical analysis indicators. The results are promising since the approach clearly outperforms the remaining approaches during the recent market crash.

The management of financial portfolios or funds constitutes a widely known problematic in financial markets which normally requires a rigorous analysis in order to select the most profitable assets. This subject is becoming popular among computer scientists which try to adapt known Intelligent Computation techniques to the market’s domain. This book proposes a potential system based on Genetic Algorithms, which aims to manage a financial portfolio by using technical analysis indicators. The results are promising since the approach clearly outperforms the remaining approaches during the recent market crash.

The book focuses on smart computing for crowdfunding usage, looking at the crowdfunding landscape, e.g., reward-, donation-, equity-, P2P-based and the crowdfunding ecosystem, e.g., regulator, asker, backer, investor, and operator. The increased complexity of fund raising scenario, driven by the broad economic environment as well as the need for using alternative funding sources, has sparked research in smart computing techniques. Covering a wide range of detailed topics, the authors of this book offer an outstanding overview of the current state of the art; providing deep insights into smart computing methods, tools, and their applications in crowdfunding; exploring the importance of smart analysis, prediction, and decision-making within the fintech industry. This book is intended to be an authoritative and valuable resource for professional practitioners and researchers alike, as well as finance engineering, and computer science students who are interested in crowdfunding and other emerging fintech topics.

The book is a monograph in the cross disciplinary area of Computational Intelligence in Finance and elucidates a collection of practical and strategic Portfolio Optimization models in Finance, that employ Metaheuristics for their effective solutions and demonstrates the results using MATLAB implementations, over live portfolios invested across global stock universes. The book has been structured in such a way that, even novices in finance or metaheuristics should be able to comprehend and work on the hybrid models discussed in the book.

This work presents a new approach to portfolio composition in the stock market. It incorporates a fundamental approach using financial ratios and technical indicators with a Multi-Objective Evolutionary Algorithms to choose the portfolio composition with two objectives the return and the risk. Two different chromosomes are used for representing different investment models with real constraints equivalents to the ones faced by managers of mutual funds, hedge funds, and pension funds. To validate the present solution two case studies are presented for the SP&500 for the period June 2010 until end of 2012. The simulations demonstrates that stock selection based on financial ratios is a combination that can be used to choose the best companies in operational terms, obtaining returns above the market average with low variances in their returns. In this case the optimizer found stocks with high return on investment in a conjunction with high rate of growth of the net income and a high profit margin. To obtain stocks with high valuation potential it is necessary to choose companies with a lower or average market capitalization, low PER, high rates of revenue growth and high operating leverage

When you combine nature's efficiency and the computer's speed, thefinancial possibilities are almost limitless. Today's traders andinvestment analysts require faster, sleeker weaponry in today'sruthless financial marketplace. Battles are now waged at computerspeed, with skirmishes lasting not days or weeks, but mere hours.In his series of influential articles, Richard Bauer has shown whythese professionals must add new computerized decision-making toolsto their arsenal if they are to succeed. In Genetic Algorithms andInvestment Strategies, he uniquely focuses on the most powerfulweapon of all, revealing how the speed, power, and flexibility ofGAs can help them consistently devise winning investmentstrategies. The only book to demonstrate how GAs can workeffectively in the world of finance, it first describes thebiological and historical bases of GAs as well as othercomputerized approaches such as neural networks and chaos theory.It goes on to compare their uses, advantages, and overallsuperiority of GAs. In subsequently presenting a basic optimizationproblem, Genetic Algorithms and Investment Strategies outlines theessential steps involved in using a GA and shows how it mimicsnature's evolutionary process by moving quickly toward anear-optimal solution. Introduced to advanced variations ofessential GA procedures, readers soon learn how GAs can be usedto: * Solve large, complex problems and smaller sets of problems * Serve the needs of traders with widely different investmentphilosophies * Develop sound market timing trading rules in the stock and bondmarkets * Select profitable individual stocks and bonds * Devise powerful portfolio management systems Complete with information on relevant software programs, a glossaryof GA terminology, and an extensive bibliography coveringcomputerized approaches and market timing, Genetic Algorithms andInvestment Strategies unveils in clear, nontechnical language aremarkably efficient strategic decision-making process that, whenimaginatively used, enables traders and investment analysts to reapsignificant financial rewards.

Control of an impartial balance between risks and returns has become important for investors, and having a combination of financial instruments within a portfolio is an advantage. Portfolio management has thus become very important for reaching a resolution in high-risk investment opportunities and addressing the risk-reward tradeoff by maximizing returns and minimizing risks within a given investment period for a variety of assets. Metaheuristic Approaches to Portfolio Optimization is an essential reference source that examines the proper selection of financial instruments in a financial portfolio management scenario in terms of metaheuristic approaches. It also explores common measures used for the evaluation of risks/returns of portfolios in real-life situations. Featuring research on topics such as closed-end funds, asset allocation, and risk-return paradigm, this book is ideally designed for investors, financial professionals, money managers, accountants, students, professionals, and researchers.

Computational intelligence, a sub-branch of artificial intelligence, is a field which draws on the natural world and adaptive mechanisms in order to study behaviour in changing complex environments. This book provides an interdisciplinary view of current technological advances and challenges concerning the application of computational intelligence techniques to financial time-series forecasting, trading and investment. The book is divided into five parts. The first part introduces the most important computational intelligence and financial trading concepts, while also presenting the most important methodologies from these different domains. The second part is devoted to the application of traditional computational intelligence techniques to the fields of financial forecasting and trading, and the third part explores the applications of artificial neural networks in these domains. The fourth part delves into novel evolutionary-based hybrid methodologies for trading and portfolio management, while the fifth part presents the applications of advanced computational intelligence modelling techniques in financial forecasting and trading. This volume will be useful for graduate and postgraduate students of finance, computational finance, financial engineering and computer science. Practitioners, traders and financial analysts will also benefit from this book.