Machine Learning Factor?

What are potential monthly returns and alphas from applying machine learning to pick stocks? In their February 2019 paper entitled “Machine Learning for Stock Selection”, Keywan Rasekhschaffe and Robert Jones summarize basic concepts of machine leaning and apply them to select stocks from U.S. and non-U.S. samples, focusing on the cross-section of returns (as in equity factor studies). To alleviate overfitting in an environment with low signal-to-noise ratios, they highlight use of: (1) data feature engineering, and (2) combining outputs from different machine learning algorithms and training sets. Feature engineering applies market/machine learning knowledge to select the forecast variable, algorithms likely to be effective, training sets likely to be informative, factors likely to be informative and factor standardization approach. Their example employs an initial 10-year training period and then walks forecasts forward monthly (as in most equity factor research) for each stock, as follows:

• Employ 194 firm/stock input variables.
• Use three rolling training sets (last 12 months, same calendar month last 10 years and bottom half of performance last 10 years), separately for U.S. and non-U.S. samples.
• Apply four machine learning algorithms, generating 12 signals (three training sets times four algorithms) for each stock each month, plus a composite signal based on percentile rankings of the 12 signals.
• Rank stocks into tenths (deciles) based on each signal, which forecasts probability of next-month outperformance/underperformance.
• Form two hedge portfolios that are long the decile of stocks with the highest expected performance and short the decile with the lowest, one equal-weighted and one risk-weighted (inverse volatility over the past 100 trading days), with a 2-day lag between forecast and portfolio reformation to accommodate execution.
• Calculate gross and net average excess (relative to U.S. Treasury bill yield) returns and 4-factor (market, size, book-to-market, momentum) alphas for the portfolios. To estimate net performance, they assume 0.3% round trip trading frictions. 

They consider two benchmark portfolios that pick long and short side using non-machine learning methods. Using a broad sample of small, medium and large stocks (average 5,907 per month) spanning 22 developed markets, and contemporaneous values for the 194 input variables, during January 1994 through December 2016, they find that: (more…)