Empirical Asset Pricing via Machine Learning
79 Pages Posted: 9 Apr 2018 Last revised: 15 Sep 2019
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Empirical Asset Pricing via Machine Learning
Empirical Asset Pricing Via Machine Learning
Date Written: September 13, 2019
Abstract
We perform a comparative analysis of machine learning methods for the canonical problem of empirical asset pricing: measuring asset risk premia. We demonstrate large economic gains to investors using machine learning forecasts, in some cases doubling the performance of leading regression-based strategies from the literature. We identify the best performing methods (trees and neural networks) and trace their predictive gains to allowance of nonlinear predictor interactions that are missed by other methods. All methods agree on the same set of dominant predictive signals which includes variations on momentum, liquidity, and volatility. Improved risk premium measurement through machine learning simplifies the investigation into economic mechanisms of asset pricing and highlights the value of machine learning in financial innovation.
Keywords: Machine Learning, Big Data, Return Prediction, Cross-Section of Returns, Ridge Regression, (Group) Lasso, Elastic Net, Random Forest, Gradient Boosting, (Deep) Neural Networks, Fintech
JEL Classification: G10, G11, G14, C14, C11, C21, C22, C23, C58
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