Forecasting currency exchange rate time series with fireworks-algorithm-based higher order neural network with special attention to training data enrichment

Exchange rates are highly fluctuating by nature, thus difficult to forecast. Artificial neural networks (ANN) have proved to be better than statistical methods. Inadequate training data may lead the model to reach suboptimal solution resulting, poor accuracy as ANN-based forecasts are data driven. To enhance forecasting accuracy, we suggests a method of enriching training dataset through exploring and incorporating of virtual data points (VDPs) by an evolutionary method called as fireworks algorithm trained functional link artificial neural network (FWA-FLN). The model maintains the correlation between the current and past data, especially at the oscillation point on the time series. The exploring of a VDP and forecast of the succeeding term go consecutively by the FWA-FLN. Real exchange rate time series are used to train and validate the proposed model. The efficiency of the proposed technique is related to other models trained similarly and produces far better prediction accuracy