arXiv Machine Learning

Target alignment, dilution and forecast selection when cross-sectional forecasts share a common target

arXiv AI
Aug 17

Forecast Collapse in Time-Series Foundation Models

arXiv:2608. 14106v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: When forecasting hourly returns for 1,000 US equities, we observe an unexpected phenomenon: predictions become nearly flat and show poor stock ranking, as measured by cross-sectional correlation.

By Shu Wan, Miles Ma, Hank Zhu, Guangqi Liu, Stephen Wang, Qingsong Wen, Huan Liu
arXiv AI
Sep 24

Loss Choice or Model Choice? The Role of Forecast Level in Cryptocurrency Volatility Forecasting

The paper investigates how the choice of loss function versus the choice of forecasting model affects cryptocurrency volatility predictions. By comparing seven loss functions and five models, and aligning forecast levels before evaluation, the study finds that after level adjustment model choice dominates performance differences, while loss-induced variations largely disappear. The work clarifies that apparent loss effects in raw comparisons are largely due to forecast level differences rather than intrinsic model performance.

By Andrzej Tokajuk, Jaros{\l}aw A. Chudziak
arXiv Machine Learning
Sep 24

Evaluation Choices Decide the Forecasting Leaderboard: Evidence from a Production Marketplace Panel

The paper demonstrates that the outcome of a forecasting leaderboard is largely determined by the evaluator’s design choices rather than the models themselves. By fixing the data, horizon, and period, the authors varied three key evaluation decisions—unit of analysis, error pooling, and scoring metric—and showed that each can reverse or eliminate the apparent superiority of any forecasting method. The study also evaluates the practical impact of these choices on a deployed system, revealing that the selection rule captures a significant portion of the potential performance gain, and confirms the findings on an external public dataset.

By Md Rezwanul Islam, Wael Mohammed
arXiv Machine Learning
Jun 2

FinTSB: A Comprehensive and Practical Benchmark for Financial Time Series Forecasting

arXiv:2502. 18834v3 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Financial time series (FinTS) record the behavior of human-brain-augmented decision-making, capturing valuable historical information that can be leveraged for profitable investment strategies.

By Yifan Hu, Yuante Li, Peiyuan Liu, Yuxia Zhu, Naiqi Li, Tao Dai, Shu-tao Xia, Dawei Cheng, Changjun Jiang
arXiv Machine Learning
Sep 25

Downside-Controlled Online Forecast Combination under Delayed and Revised Outcomes

The paper proposes a method for controlling downside risk when adjusting forecasts from frozen models, such as foundation models, by combining a static corrector and an online corrector on the simplex. Using only post‑horizon losses, the approach achieves minimal deterioration (0.15%) and up to 11.5% gains across 28 forecast pairs, and consistently reduces mean MSE in day‑ahead load forecasts for seven European bidding zones. The method’s applicability is bounded by three empirical conditions related to expert speed, stream length, and outcome alignment.

By Minkyoung Kim, Hyunjung Byun, Yohan Lee, Beakcheol Jang
arXiv Machine Learning
Aug 31

Generalized Gibbs Ensemble Weighting for Forecast Combination

The paper introduces Generalized Gibbs Ensemble Weighting (GGEW), a probabilistic framework that assigns weights to forecasting models using a Gibbs-style exponential transformation of normalized predictive loss. GGEW extends basic weighting through numerical stabilization, diversity-aware score corrections, and online hyperparameter adaptation, yielding variants such as Stable Gibbs weighting, Directional Gibbs-NCL, and Symmetric Gibbs-NCL. The authors evaluate GGEW on M4 competition submissions and real-world datasets (Monash Traffic, Electricity, Solar), finding that Gibbs-style adaptive weighting is competitive across various settings, though performance varies by dataset, horizon, and deployment protocol.

By Prasen R. Nuthanakaluva, Nava K. Gaddam
arXiv Machine Learning
Sep 4

Sliding-Window Reordering with Overlap Averaging: A Simple Time-Domain Augmentation for Multivariate Forecasting

The paper introduces a simple, model‑agnostic time‑domain augmentation called Sliding‑Window Reordering with Overlap Averaging. It transforms the joint input‑target sequence into overlapping windows, randomly reorders a fraction of them based on a variance criterion, and reconstructs the sequence by averaging overlaps to generate synthetic samples with controlled variation and minimal temporal distortion. Experiments show strong performance gains across nine long‑term forecasting benchmarks and four short‑term traffic benchmarks, with detailed ablations and diagnostics highlighting the effectiveness of each design choice.

By Jafar Bakhshaliyev, Johannes Burchert, Niels Landwehr, Lars Schmidt-Thieme
arXiv Machine Learning
Aug 4

Beyond Magnitude and Shape: A Direction-Aware Loss for Time Series Forecasting

arXiv:2608. 01857v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: The direction of change --- whether a series will move up or down --- is often as important as its exact value in decisiondriven applications such as risk management and financial forecasting.

By Seunghan Lee, Jaehoon Lee, Jun Seo, Junhyeok Kang, Sangjun Han, Sungdong Yoo, Minjae Kim, Tae Yoon Lim, Dongwan Kang, Hwanil Choi, Soonyoung Lee, Wonbin Ahn