intelligent neural network forecaster to predict the Standard & Poor 500's index

In this thesis we present an intelligent forecaster based on neural network technology to capture the future path of the market indicator. This thesis is about the development of a new methodology in financial forecasting. An effort is made to develop a neural network forecaster using the financial indicators as the input variables. A complex recurrent neural network is used to capture the behavior of the nonlinear characteristics of the S&P 500. The main outcome of this research is, a systematic way of constructing a forecaster for nonlinear and non-stationary data series of S&P 500 that leads to very good out-of-sample prediction. The results of the training and testing of the network are presented along with conclusion. The tool used for the validation of this research is "Brainmaker". This thesis also contains a brief survey of available tools for financial forecasting.