Currency trading in volatile markets: Did neural networks outperform for the EUR/USD during the financial crisis 2007-2009

Abstract

The motivation for this article is to check whether neural network models have remained a superior method for forecasting the EUR/USD exchange rate during the financial crisis of 2007-2009. Alternative neural network architectures (Multi-Layer Perceptron (MLP), Recurrent Neural Network and Higher Order Neural Network (HONN)) are benchmarked against a random walk and a traditional ARMA model, and evaluated in terms of statistical accuracy and through a trading simulation on daily data over the period from January 2000 to February 2009, the period from August 2007 to February 2009, providing the out-of-sample testing period. Transaction costs and a confirmation filter devised to reduce false signals and thus also reduce losses and transaction costs were also taken into consideration. It is shown that the HONN structure gives the overall best results on a simple trading simulation; however, for an advanced trading simulation with a confirmation filter, the MLP outperforms all other models on most performance measures. On the whole, the results show that neural networks are still able to produce forecasts that yield a positive return and are superior to those of linear and more traditional models, with respect to both trading performance and statistical accuracy, even under very volatile market conditions. © 2012 Macmillan Publishers Ltd.