Forecasting Exchange Rates using Support Vector Machine Regression

This paper applies Support Vector Regression (SVR) to estimate and forecast nonlinear autoregressive integrated (ARI) model of the daily exchange rates of four currencies (Swiss Francs, Indian Rupees, South Korean Won and Philippines Pesos) against U.S. dollar. The forecasting abilities of SVR are compared with linear ARI model which is estimated by OLS. Sensitivity of SVR results are also examined to kernel type and other free parameters. Empirical findings are in favor of SVR. SVR method forecasts exchange rate level better than linear ARI model and also has superior ability in forecasting the exchange rates direction in short test phase but has similar performance with OLS when forecasting the turning points in long test phase.