Application of Deep Learning Methods to Forecasting Changes in Short-Term Currency Trends

This study investigates the issues of forecasting changes in short-term currency trends using deep learning models, which is relevant for both the scientific community and for traders and investors. The purpose of this study is to build a model for forecasting the direction of change in the prices of currency quotes based on deep neural networks. The developed architecture was based on the model of valve recurrent node, which is a modification of the model of “Long Short-Term Memory”, but is simpler in terms of the number of parameters and learning time. The forecast calculations of the dynamics of quotations of the currency pair euro/dollar and the most capitalised cryptocurrency Bitcoin/dollar were performed using daily, four-hour and hourly datasets. The obtained results of binary classification (forecast of the direction of trend change) when applying daily and hourly quotations turned out to be generally better than those of time series models or models of neural networks of other architecture (in particular, multilayer perceptron or “Long Short-Term Memory” models). According to the study results, the highest accuracy of classification was for the model of daily quotations for both euro/dollar – about 72%, and for Bitcoin/ dollar – about 69%. For four-hour and hourly time series, the accuracy of classification decreased, which can be explained both by the increase in the impact of “market noise” and the probable overfitting. Computer simulation has demonstrated that models predict a rising trend better than a declining one. The study confirmed the prospects for the application of deep learning models for short-term forecasting of time series of currency quotes. The use of the developed models proved to be effective for both fiat and cryptocurrencies. The proposed system of models based on deep neural networks can be used as a basis for developing an automated trading system in the foreign exchange market.