Evolutionary learning of technical trading rules without data-mining bias

Abstract

In this paper we investigate the profitability of evolved technical trading rules when controlling for data-mining bias. For the first time in the evolutionary computation literature, a comprehensive test for a rule’s statistical significance using Hansen’s Superior Predictive Ability is explicitly taken into account in the fitness function, and multi-objective evolutionary optimisation is employed to drive the search towards individual rules with better generalisation abilities. Empirical results on a spot foreign-exchange market index suggest that increased out-of-sample performance can be obtained after accounting for data-mining bias effects in a multi-objective fitness function, as compared to a single-criterion fitness measure that considers solely the average return.