The Elusive Nacirema Tribe Essay Example for Free

The Elusive Nacirema Tribe EssayIn the everyday life of the comprehend normal individual, rituals and rites performed by individuals as part of a different culture might seem harsh, cruel or even barbaric. After my first acquire of Body Ritual among the Nacirema, that is how I perceived their daily way of life. They believe in magic potions, seeking pain from the holy mouth men a couple of times a year, and the men and women perform acts that seem to contradict one another by exhausting to obtain abnormal body shapes, and hence the men cut their face daily and the women bake their heads in small ovens for about an hour. What I discovered when reading this hold again was that the author, Sir Horatio Galbraith, model a spin on words in gentle cosmosy different ways, but this article just goes to show that what may seem normal to you could be portrayed as a terrible way to conduct daily life to others. In this article, Galbraith make mention about the Nacirema people being incarcerated into pathetic and disease ridden bodies, and they make extreme efforts to avert these characteristics through the use of the powerful influences of ritual and ceremony.He also noted that these people make visits to receive torturously painful procedure they consider an exorcism of the evils from a magical practitioner best known as the holy-mouth-men. At first glance, both of these points the author has made make it seem as though these people are very rigid and harsh with their decisions in life. It seems almost like they make an effort to incur pain on themselves to achieve a culturally acceptable air. However after analyzing and relating these acts to my own way of life, I noted several similarities.In beau monde today, the majority of people strive to look better than they currently do by dieting, working out and by making sure their mouth and teething look their very best. These are just a few examples among many other efforts that are made by people to look b etter than they normally do, or at least get close to or above the normal standard. The holy-mouth-men is a clear reference to the dentist. Galbraith noted that the Nacirema people visit this man once or twice a year which falls into the normal visit frequency todays order of magnitude exhibits.The rituals and rites performed by the people of the Nacirema kinsperson were diversely separated between men and women. A specific ritual only performed by the men involves scraping and lacerating the surface of the face with a abrupt instrument. The description of this practice will lead the unknowing reader to derive this as an act of barbarity, however after trying to find a confederacy between this description and something that occurs during the daily life of the men in todays society, I discovered that this is nothing more than an embellished description of a man shaving his face daily with what else a razorThis lawsuit of twist and embellishment on words is what hindered me from figuring out what the real purpose of this article was in the first place. Galbraith makes reference to a ritual performed four times during on lunar month, only by women. His comment regarding this act by the women was what they neglect in frequency is made up in barbarity. The ritual performed by the women was described as baking their heads in small ovens for about an hour. Of course this type of act sounds horrific when worded this way, but again I tried to make a connection.When women in todays society get their hair diagonal or have a permanent curl put in their hair, they have to sit under the dryer on the chairs that line the walls of the hair salon. I have sat under one of these chairs myself, and I cannot imagine that it is even anywhere near the same extreme of baking your head for an hour in a small oven. I believe one point the author was trying to make was that not only are these people obsessed with their appearance and overall health, but they are more obsessed wi th being to control and change it as they see fit.Galbraith also seemed as though he was trying to make note of the fact that they want to look better than the average, but in doing so, they want to keep it a secret as if the surrounding members of their society will not discover that they are not naturally made that way. Ethnocentrically, these types of practices seem strange and it seems as though these people are trying as well hard however, from a culturally relative point of view every individual has the right to practice whatever rites and rituals they deem fit and proper, as vast as they do not fall on the wrong side of the legal law that resides over their area.As part of this assignment, I am mantic to list how I would react if placed in this culture however I believe I am already living and functioning in this culture. Galbraith did not just make a act as on words when describing the normal acts of the day to day individual, he also made a play on words when he named th is tribe Nacirema spelled backwards it spells American.I have gone through this article time and time again and have successfully identified everything he mentioned in the article as a connection with the American people. The only difference is that Galbraith went to extremes when describing the rituals and rites as to mislead the reader, but in a way everything he said was accurate in context. I enjoyed reading and analyzing this article once I made the connection. In some ways it was an oculus opener, and other parts made me laugh.

Navigating the Business Communication Environment

Navigating the Business Communication EnvironmentReconda ArmijoHow does teamwork help organizations? What communication ch altogetherenges does teamwork pose? How might one swot for these ch every last(predicate)enges in a telephone circuit communication course?Team work helps organizations by bringing together peoples varying strengths and talents to solve problems and authorise decisions (Locker Kienzler, 2013). Teamwork alike allows for input from varying perspectives based on type of job or function as well as from a different heathen perspective. For example, in my office, my strengths atomic number 18 on an administrative side thus I am given the administrative tasks to focus on while my co-worker who is frothing works more in creating the inviting atmosphere we want for our guests. Teamwork can also earn challenges in communicating tasks and distribution of work. It requires the ability to see one some others strengths and utilizing them. A communication course can h elp prepare individuals to recognize ways to effective communicate ones strengths and place them in tasks where they can utilise those strengths and at convictions be able to draw one out of their own self-limiting habits.In what ways is teamwork connected to other current trends in crinkle and administrative communication that the chapter discusses? Find examples where current trends in business and administrative communication seem to converge.Teamwork offers an opportunity to maximize employees strengths. This is evident in customer service especially. Team members who are strong in customer service can assist those who may not be as strong to transgress those skills more easily. Teamwork is also important to assist with balancing work and family. When we work together as a team, we are able to handle situations that may train when a coworker is out and vice versa. In my office, we are all trained to handle all situations. This allows us to continue moving forward regardless of who is out. This helps our telephoner to continue to be productive and not have to wait for a particular person to return for a task to be completed or resolved.Conduct some internet or library research on the concept of Kaizen. How does this technique help business and other types of organizations? What communication challenges and opportunities does the technique create?Kaizen is a coaching order used to transform people into correct problem solvers, thinkers, and leaders. They utilize a hands-on approach to learning. They teach you how to observe processes, nominate abnormalities and root causes and apply their techniques to make practical improvements (Kaizen Institute, 2014). This could present communication challenges as you try to help employees see their faults but more importantly their potential. Employees volition be sensitive to being told they are doing something wrong so caution holds to be exercised by showing them more efficient use of time and skills. This also offers the opportunity to express ways of maximizing on strengths and acknowledging those strengths.Help Caleb and the group draft the memo for Doug, Some questions to consider How will you address its multiple audiences, which allow the president, VPs, and managers? What should be the primary purpose of the memo? The secondary purpose? What type of and how much information on Kaizen should be included?All-Weather, Inc. has had the privilege of experiencing Kaizen, a method of learning to improve our current methods and maximize our resources and strengths. We will be implementing a system for reducing waste, creating measureable improvements, and developing people and enhancing our customers delight. You are all a part of this process. Together we can transform this company and our individual lives.Training workshops will be scheduled with two of the best experts on the subject. These workshops are designed to coach, teach, mentor and guide us on a transformation journey foc used on getting results and developing people to be better better problem solvers, thinkers, and leaders. The Kaizen focus is on everybody, everyday and everywhere improvement. We look forward to seeing our company and staffs develop to be better in all aspect.Chapter Five Planning, Composing, and RevisingFind the mistakes that Tanner made in his interaction with the Nipponese professors.Tanners mistakes included the firm handshake and using legal injury meant only for phone conversations, improper handling of the business cards and not offering one in return, the satiny on the back of Dr. Kawabata, and the choice of his gifts and air pressure in opening the gift. These all show his lack of learning the cultural differences and etiquette. Understanding these differences can make a huge difference in the birth formed.Prepare a memo for Caleb to include information regarding the aspects of Japanese culture and etiquette.As we quickly approach the Kaizen training, it important for us to take some time to understand the Japanese business culture and etiquette. In practice, Japanese business etiquette is not so different than our own. Politeness, sensitivity and good manners are the pillars of Japanese business just as they are here. However, Japanese business etiquette is more formal, almost ritualistic in some aspects.Below are a a few(prenominal) key aspects of Japanese business etiquetteBusiness cards are a must have. Accept them with both hands and say thank you. Treat them with reckon and keep them in a proper carrying case.Business attire Men wear a dark suit, black or navy in the winter and grey for summer months, and have well groomed short hairstyles. Additionally, facial hair and shaved heads are not allowed. Do not wear a black suite, white shirt and black tie as this is considered funeral attire. Japanese men do not easily relate to women in authority so it is recommended that women wear shorter (tied back) hair, trouser suits with seasonal colo rs like the men. Jewelry, short skirts and high-heeled shoes are also not accepted. Business attire is not complete without business cards.Business Meetings it is proper to confirm the appointment 1-2 hours prior to scheduled meeting as well as 1 hour advanced notice if you will be late to give the opportunity to reschedule if necessary. Arrive 10 minutes early. Be prepared and able to present in the allotted time. clutches to be seated and take lots of notes.Personal Habits Avoid firm handshakes. Japanese seldom shake hands and this can make them uncomfortable. Never pat a Japanese man on the back/shoulder. Never make derogatory remarks about anyone. Always smile, be pleasant, willing to learn and ask questions. Do noAs you can see, things that we consider a normal part of our business day can be offensive in other cultures. We need to be mindful and respectful to our valued guest. We would expect nothing less from our business partners as well.ReferencesKaizen Institute. (2014, J anuary 18). Lean Consulting. Retrieved from Kaizen Institute http//us.kaizen.com/consulting/lean-consulting.htmlLocker, L. O., Kienzler, D. S. (2013). Business and Administrative Communication. New York McGraw-Hill/Irwin. casualty Japan. (2014, January 18). Japanese Business Ettiquette. Retrieved from Venture Japan http//www.venturejapan.com/japanese-business-etiquette.htm

Additional Elements Of The Extended Marketing Mix Marketing Essay

Additional Elements Of The Extended Marketing Mix Marketing EssayThis essay looks at the main elements of both the original and the extended trade mingle. This includes an introduction to the concept of the merchandise life cycle, new product trailment, set strategies, distri saveion options and the promotion mix. Finally, the essay develops securities industrying mixes for Deans Leisure Centre to meet the involve of antithetic butt end groups.Explain how products argon developed to sustain competitive service.Sustainable competitive advantage is the focal point of a corporate strategy. It allows the nutriment and improvement of an enterprises competitive position in the trade. It is an advantage that enables business to survive against its competition over a long period of time. A competitive advantage is an advantage over competitors gained by offering consumers greater value, either by means of lower prices or by providing greater benefits and service that justifies high ge arer prices key (Appendix 1). When a firm sustains profits that exceed the average for its industry, the firm is said to possess a competitive advantage over its rivals. The goal of much of business strategy is to achieve a sustainable competitive advantage. Porter identified two basic types of competitive advantage and cost advantage. suppose (Appendix 2)When an organisation introduces a product into a market they must consider who is the product aimed at, what benefit go verboten guests expect, how does the firm plan to position the product within the market and what first derivative advantage will the product offer over their competitors. Kotler suggested that a product should be viewed in three trains Core Product, Actual Product and Augmented product. examine Deans product levels in (Appendix 3).However, for a product to be able to sustain competitive advantage the term New Product Development has been developed. This has been invented to check and develop the v iability of a product which is new to a market. Deans think about term of new product development in order to sustain or pattern a competitive advantage. To do this Deans follow (NPD) processes, see (Appendix 4). Deans is the market leader in providing various products like lycee, spa and hydrotherapy pool as thither are no competitors in this sector. There superb image makes the organisation more strong. Deans is providing good quality products with qualified staff, good atmosphere and hygienic environment. motive level of staff is very high which make the organisation more prosperous. They have enough resources for operating different activities of the organisation. They have created good image in customers mind another big strength and even a competitive advantage is the fact that they have a full service gym Deans sack market too many different segments that other gym gitnot do. For standard, Deans is open to all staffs, students and community much easier than other fit ness centres because most of the people are not good financially so they can attract by their low prices with good quality gym services. They are providing high range of products relatively with low prices.Explain how distribution is arranged to provide customer convenience.Distribution really plays a very alpha role in enhancing the convenience of the customers then distribution system of a political party can appear as a major competency for the company. There are four elements of market mix including product, price, promotion and place. The distribution conveys under the place category and the companies develop proper distribution system because accessibility of the customers enhances the potential sales for a company. Two types of epithelial duct of distribution methods are available. Indirect distribution involves distributing product by the use of an intermediary. Direct distribution involves distributing direct from a manufacturer to the consumer.For example, Deans alre ady has its location so will therefore look at the fate and wants of its customers in this area, with staff and students of the college. If Deans does not outsource its distribution services then customers may not impulsive to get them. They must distribute the product to the user at the right place at the right time. Deans consider on its overall market objectives to be efficient and effective.Explain how prices are set to reflect an organisations objectives and market conditions.One of the aspects in the marketing mix is pricing. This part of the 7 Ps are the atomic number 53 creating revenue and which is also why it is important that an organisation chooses the correct price. The price is determined by the discovery of what the customer finds reasonable and this is also why a lot of organisations chooses to do researches of the consumers opinions before the product goes to the markets. Pricing is difficult and must reflect supply and demand relationship. Pricing a product too high or too low could mean a loss of sales for the organisation.Pricing is one of the most important elements of the Dean Gym marketing mix, as it is the only mix, which generates a turnover for the Deans. The gym can adopt a number of pricing strategies. The pricing strategies are based much on what objectives the company has set itself to achieve, see belowPenetration pricing Here the organisation sets a low price to increase sales and market share. Once market share has been captured the firm may intimately then increase their priceSkimming pricing The organisation sets an initial high price and then tardily lowers the price to make the product available to a wider market. The objective is to skim profits of the market layer by layer.Competition pricing Setting a price in comparison with competitors. Really a firm has three options and these are to price lower, price the same or price higher.Discount pricing This involve offering a reduced price of certain types and groups of customers.Variable pricing An organisation can very price by customer types, level and quality of service, times and days, seasons and so on.Cost-plus pricing Here the firm add a percentage to costs as profit margin to come to their final pricing decisions.Convincing consumers to try a new product or service is one of the biggest challenges small businesses face. Marketing can be curiously difficult for membership like gyms because consumers may be wary of committing to a recurring fee. Dean Gym use pricing tactic to help framing a base of customers. As there are such competitors of Deans gym which could compete with the quality of gym produced at Deans, therefore the pricing strategy adopt by Deans gym is discount pricing. Dean uses free trials because some people simply will not spend money on a gym membership unless they can try it out first, which is why they give two months free membership and it can give customers the opportunity to see if a forwardness suits their needs. They offering low introductory rates because it is another tactic that Dean Gym can use to attract new customers. For example, Dean has periodic membership, where members hand monthly straight out of their bank account and with no contract. They also has annual advance, with this option customers pay for their membership for the year up front, but they will give them two months free. Deans offer 10% discounts for families and children. Families and children often go to the gym together, which can make gym membership a group decision.However, pricing strategies can improve Deans customer loyalty and ultimately lead to better membership numbers.Illustrate how promotional activity is integrated to achieve marketing objectives.These activities are performed in order to awake and aware the consumers about the product. advance being a feature of marketing mix consists of communication among the consumer and supplier of that product. Promotional activities are important chemical elemen t because it tells the consumer about the product from different regions and it becomes difficult in selling a product if they are not being anticipated in the market through different promotional activities. The promotional mix consistsAdvertising Presentation of the product which is wanted to be promoted- this can be done by for example bill boards, banners or posters. The advantages are advertising can inform people about different products and services, their utilities, cost and other requirements. The disadvantage is cost because advertising is more expansive.Personal Selling This can be done by a company by training their sales team to know all need to know about the product so it can be sold by a presentation. Personal selling is one of the ways to keep good customers relationships, but this method is expensive.Sales promotion Here it is communicated in a time limited way to increase consumer demand by for example contests, samples or trade shows. The advantage is that sales promotion can help companies to provide right information to customers, also it encourage repeat purchases and customer loyalty, but the advantages are that it increase price sensitivity and it is generally for a short durationPublic relations This can be paid or non paid stimulations of a product. This can be a product represented in for example magazines, TV or radio etc. PR is inexpensiveness of the cost, but it is hard to point about the responses and it increase the risk.Direct marketing This aspect is a way to reach the consumers directly, such as fliers or street advertising. It allow to target particular proposition customer and it can be measureable, but it is hard to get as immediate of an impact when using direct marketing and it can be sort of expansive.For example, for the promotion Deans adopt advertisement, public relations and internet marketing.Analyse the additional elements of the extended marketing mixMarketing mix has three additional elements People, affect and Physical EvidencePeople This refers to the people who are in direct contact with the customer such as staff. One of the of import parts in selling a product is the staff and its service as lot of people rely on a good service before buy a product. The employees should have the appropriate interpersonal skills, attitude and knowledge of the product. Some companies make sure to train their staff to ensure the service the customer is want for- this can be done by guidelines of selling or training schools in selling. For example, the employees in Dean Gym have a standard same and Dean specially focuses on friendly and prompt service to its customers from their employees. The employees are part time workers and full time workers.Process This concerns the process of delivering a service. It is crucial that the company delivers as easy as possible and completing a sale without any unnecessary steps. Dean has a number of processes involved in making marketing effective in organisati on e.g. processes for handling customer complaints, processes for identifying customer needs and requirements, processes for handling equipments.Physical evidence This part of the mix is an inwrought part where consumers will base their decisions based on the service which is partly visible. This could be a members card, a friendly environment. Dean gym focuses on scavenge and hygienic interiors of its outlets and at the same time the interiors are attractive and the gym maintains a proper etiquette at its joints. The design, furnishing, layout and decoration of the gym chain as well as the appearance and attitudes of its employees will influence customer perceptions of the service quality and experiences.Plan marketing mixes for two different segments in consumer markets.Deans is focusing on target market when it markets a product it mainly consider on demographic and physiographic segmentations where demographic segment before it markets it identify the consumer groups in age, s ex, education, race, and occupation, and in physiographic it divides the market into different levels as Lower class, middle class, and upper class to identify their customers, Where Deans has planned to market a new product for a different segmentation so it needs to identify the consumers. After the segmentation Deans consider on the marketing mix its also called as the 4ps.Deans gym 4PsProduct Deans gym offers a human body of fitness equipment for both strength training and cardio. The gym has a state of the art fitness suite equipped with the latest Technogym Visio Web cardiovascular equipment. This allows customer to browse the web, watch television, read articles or update social internet account whilst working out. If you prefer a group exercise programme timetable is available. See (Appendix 5) terms Deans offer two different price sections for the gym, one for students and staff of the college at a reduced rate but with limited hours, these hours are knowing to work arou nd students courses and another that student/staff of the college can use over more hours and use more of the facilities. The gym then offers a abstract to the public of Bronze/Silver/Gold/Platinum. See membership options and price list in (Appendix 6)Place Deans Sport and leisure is located at Knights Building, capital of Nebraska College. This is a prime location for Lincoln college students and staffs to be target as an expansion of their current market share as it is within the college. See (Appendix 7)Promotion Deans is currently using public relations and internet marketing, where they advertise through radio, magazine, news paper, and social network like Facebook, Tweeter, and their official website.Deans spa 4PsProduct Deans spa is part of membership, where they offer spa pool with loungers, sauna, steam room, tropical shower, ice shower, foot spa. Additional packages include Spa packages, dermalogica facials, massage, body treatments, hands and feet, salon. See (Appendix 8)Price Deans offer three different price sections for the spa senior spa therapist, spa therapist and student therapist. See (Appendix 9)Place Deans spa is located at Deans Building, Lincoln College. Same as Deans gym students and staffs are their target market.Promotion same as the gym, Deans spa also use radio, magazine, news paper, and social network and their official website to advertise their products.Illustrate differences in marketing products and services to businesses rather than consumersThere are some characteristics to a service such as overleap of ownership, tangibility, intangibility and inseparability. Each of these needs to be taken into account when marketing a service.Customers cannot own and inclose a service like they can store a product. Services are used for a period of time. For example Deans gym have membership option where customers pay for option to use monthly and annually. A product is something which is tangible where as a service is intangible. A pr oduct is much easier than the service because after marketing and selling a product there is something tangible to be seen by the customer for his/her satisfaction but in services he/she cannot because its intangible.For example, Deans gym provides a variety of products all relate to the health, well being, and self-esteem of its members. Their tangible products include personal weight control, weight room, cardio, tanning, personal training, and a variety of drinks, supplements, and health items that all may be purchased at the Gym, but their intangible product is their services. Services cannot be separated from service providers. A product can be taken away from the producer but a service cannot be taken away as it involves the service provider. For example Deans provide group exercise such as strength training, cardio and leap classes.On other hand, the marketer needs to analyse the major demand of customers in a specific market in order to find out a product that can respond the market demand. Firstly, marketers have to improve products to meet customers demand as much as possible. Secondly, the price is an important factor in product marketing because of the price must be set to match with the purchasing power of a target group. Thirdly, the place of product marketing refers to distribution channels to deliver and sell the product to customers. Lastly, the marketer also needs to create the promotion on the product in order to pack customers and motivate the sale in a short term.ConclusionFor a company to be able to implement their marketing concept successfully the marketing mix is essential. After applying the three additional Ps it has enables the present service standard to be reached. This way a company will reach a bigger customer satisfaction as they reach their customers better in what they want and need to the easiest way for them to purchase the product. It is important when going into a different market that the companys marketing focuses on all of the different aspects in the tools of the marketing umbrella.

Artificial Neural Networks to forecast London Stock Exchange

Artificial skittish Networks to promise London Stock deputiseAbstractThis dissertation examines and analyzes the use of the Artificial uneasy Networks (ANN) to harbinger the London Stock turn. Specific every last(predicate) in ally the importance of ANN to predict the succeeding(a) tense trends and value of the pecuniary commercialise is demonst grazed. There ar some(prenominal) contributions of this probe to this ara. The first contribution of this hold is to find the best subset of the interrelated factors at both local and international levels that come to the London melodic phrase exchange from the various input vari fits to be utilise in the future studies.We use novel aspects, in the sense that we base the estimate on both the fundamental and technical abridgment.The second contribution of this study was to provide substantially defined methodological analysis that disregard be utilise to fix the monetary sit downs in future studies. In addition, th is study as strong defys various theoretical arguments in support of the set aboutes used in the construction of the foretell good example by comparing the results of the previous studies and modifying some of the existing memory accesses and tested them. The study in addition equalises the procedure of the statistical methods and ANN in the promise line. The master(prenominal) contribution of this dissertation lies in comparing the doing of the five different types of ANN by constructing the individual forecast vex of them.Accuracy of deterrent examples is discriminated by apply different rating criteria and we commence different prodigy precedents found on both the path and value accuracy of the forecasted value. The fourth contribution of this study is to investigate whether the crisscross approach cartel different individual forebode flummoxs basis outperform the individual call models and compare the murder of the different hybrid approaches. Three hybrid approaches are used in this study, two are existing approaches and the third original approach, the mixed combined neural network -is being proposed in this study to the academic studies to forecast the gestate exchange. The last contribution of this study lies in modifying the existing business st measuregy to increase the profitability of the investor and support the argument that the investor earns more profit if the forecast model is being certain by victimisation the representation accuracy as compared to the value accuracy.The best forecasting classification accuracy obtained is 93% kick accuracy and 0.0000831 (MSE) value accuracy which are better than the accuracies obtained by the previous academic studies. Moreover, this research validates the work of the existing studies that hybrid approach outperforms the individual forecasting model. In addition, the rate of the return that was attained in this thesis by using modified traffic strategy is 120.14% w hich has shown signifi bathroomt improvement as compared to the 10.8493% rate of return of the existing trading strategy in otherwise academics studies. The difference in the rate of return could be due to the fact that this study has sticked good forecasting model or a better trading strategy.The experimental results show our method non only improves the accuracy rate, but in like manner meet the short-term investors expectations. The results of this thesis excessively support the claim that some pecuniary cartridge clip serial are non entirely random, and that contrary to the anticipations of the effective commercializes hypothesis (EMH), a trading strategy could be found solely on diachronic data. It was concluded that ANN do ready good capabilities to forecast monetary markets and, if properly trained, the investor could benefit from the use of this forecasting dick and trading strategy.Chapter 11 Introduction1.1 Background to the query monetary clock Series f orecasting has attracted the interest of academic researchers and it has been talked since the 1980.It is a challenging paradox as the fiscal age serial publication energise complex behavior, resulting from a various factors much(prenominal) as economic, psychological or political crusades and they are non-stationary , noisy and deterministically chaotic.In todays world, almost every individual is influenced by the fluctuations in the banal market. Now days people prefer to invest property in the diversified financial funds or shares due to its high returns than depositing in the banks. just in that respect is lot of risk in the investment firm market due to its high rate of uncertainty and irritability. To overcome such risks, one of the main challenges for m all old age for the researchers is to develop the financial models that mint describe the movements of the occupation market and so far at that place had not been an optimum model.The complexity and hassle o f forecasting the shop exchange, and the emergence of data mining and computational intelligence techniques, as alternative techniques to the conventional statistical regression and Bayesian models with better operation, film paved the road for the increased usage of these techniques in fields of finance and economics. So, traders and investors eat to rely on the various types of intelligent schemes to make trading decisions. (Hameed,2008). A Computational Intelligence administration such as neural networks, fuzzy logic, genetic algorithms and so onhas been widely established research area in the field of knowledge systems. They have been used extensively in forecasting of the financial market and they have been quite successful to some extent .Although the physical body of purposed methods in financial clipping serial publication is very large , but no one technique has been successful to consistently to beat the market.For last three decades, fence prognosiss have exis ted between the academic communities and traders about the topic of ergodic walk theory and Efficient securities industry Hypothesis(EMH) due to the complexity of the financial period series and lot of publications by different researchers have gather various amount of evidences in support as well as against it. Lehman (1990), Haugen (1999) and Lo (2000) gave evidence of the deficiencies in EMH. unless the investors such as Warren Buffet for long period of time have beaten the gillyflower market consistently. foodstuff Efficiency or haphazard walk theory in terms of declination trading in the financial market means that it is impossible to earn excess returns using all historic culture.In essence, whence, the new information is the only variable that causes to alter the cost of the index as well as used to predict the arriver and timing. Bruce James Vanstone (2005) stated that in an businesslike market, security sets should appear to be randomly generated. Both sides in this argument are supported by experiential results from the different markets across over the globe. This thesis does not concupiscence to enter into the argument theoretically whether to accept or reject the EMH. Instead, this thesis concentrates on the methodologies to be used for development of the financial models using the artificial neural networks (ANN), compares the forecasting capabilities of the various ANN and hybrid based approach models, develop the trading strategy that can help the investor and leaves the research of this thesis to stack up with the make work of other researchers which document itinerarys to predict the entrepot market. In recent geezerhood and since its inception, ANN has gained momentum and has been widely used as a viable computational intelligent technique to forecast the tired market.The main challenge of the traders is to know the signals when the birth list market deviates and to take return of such situations. The data used by t he traders to remove the uncertainty in the stock market and to take trading decisions whether to spoil or treat the stock using the information process is noisy. Information not contained in the known information subset used to forecast is considered to be noise and such environment is characterized by a low signal-to noise ratio. Refenes et.al (1993) and Thawornwong and Enke (2004) described that the relationship between the security price or returns and the variables that constitute that price (return), changes over time and this fact is widely accepted within the academic institutes.In other words, the stock markets structural mechanics whitethorn change over time which causes the effect on the index also change. Ferreira et al. (2004) described that the relationship between the variables and the predicted index is non linear and the Artificial neural networks (ANN) have the characteristic to represent such complex non-linear relationship. This thesis presents the mechanical L ondon Stock Market trading system that uses the ANN forecasting model to extract the rules from fooling index movements and generate signal to the investors and traders whether to subvert, transport or hold a stock. The figure 1 and 2 represents the stock exchange and ANN forecasting model. By display the stock exchange as a financial market that takes historical and current data or information as an input, the investors react to this information based on their understanding, speculations, analysis etceteraIt would now seem very arduous to predict the stock market, characterized by high noise, nonlinearities, using only high frequence (weekly, unremarkable) historical prices. Surprisingly though, there are anomalies in the behavior of the stock market that cannot be explained under the existing paradigm of market efficiency. Studies discussed in the literary productions criticism have been able to predict the stock market accurately to some extent and it seems that foreca sting model au thereforetic by them have been able to pick some of the hidden public figures in the inherently non-linear price series. While it is true that forecasting model need to be designed and optimized with care in order to get accurate results .Further, it aims to contribute knowledge that exit one day lead to a standard or optimum model for the farsightedness of the stock exchange. As such, it aims to present a well defined methodological analysis that can be used to bring in the forecasting models and it is hoped that this thesis can plough more of the deficiencies of the publish research in this area. In the last decade, there has been plethora of the ANN models that were developed due to the absence of the well defined methodology, which were herculean to compare due to less published work and some of them have shown superior results in their domains. Moreover, this study also compares the predictive power of the ANN with the statistical models. Normally the ap proach used by the academic researchers in the forecasting use technical analysis and some of them include the fundamental analysis. The technical analysis uses only historical data (past price) to determine the movement of the stock exchange and fundamental analysis is based on external information (like interest rates, prices and returns of other asset) that comes from the economic system surrounding the financial market.Building a trading system using forecasting model and testing it on the military rank criteria is the only practical way to measure out the forecasting model. There has been so much prior research on identifying the appropriate trading strategy for forecasting problem. This thesis does not longing to enter into the argument which strategy is best or not. Although, the importance of the trading strategy can hardly be underestimated, but this thesis concentrates on using one of the existing strategy, modify it and compares the return by the forecasting models. Bu t there has always been debate in the academic studies over how to effectively bench mark the model of ANN for trading. Some of the academic researchers stated that predicting the counselling of the stock exchange may lead to higher profits while some of them supported the make that predicting the value of the stock exchange may lead to higher rate of return. Azoff (1994) and Thawornwong and Enke (2004) discussed about this debate in their study.In essence, there is a need for a formalized development methodology for developing the ANN financial models which can be used as a bench mark for trading systems. All of this is accommodated by this thesis.1.2 caper Statement and interrogation QuestionThe studies mentioned preceding(prenominal) have generally indicated that ANN, as used in the stock market, can be a valuable hammer to the investor .Due to some of the problems discussed supra, we are not still able to response the questionCan ANNs be used to develop the accurate fore casting model that can be used in the trading systems to earn profit for the investor?From the variety of academic research summarized in the books polish up, it is clear that a great handwriting of research in this area has taken place by different academic researchers and they have gathered various amounts of evidences in support as well as against it. This directly threatens the use of ANN applicability to the financial industry.Apart from the previous question, this research addresses various other problems1. Which ANN have better performance in the forecasting of the London Stock vary from the five different types of the ANN which are widely used in the academics?2. Which subset of the potential input variables from 2002-08 attain the LSE?3. Do international stock exchanges, currency exchange rate and other macroeconomic factors affect the LSE?4. How much the performance of the forecasting model is improved by using the regression analysis in the factor selection?5. Can us e of the technical indicators improve the performance of the forecasting model?6. Which nurture algorithm in the training of the ANN reach out the better performance?7. Does Hybrid-based call Models give better performance than the individual ANN forecasting models?8. Which Hybrid-based models have the better performance and what are the limitations of using them?9. Does the forecasting model developed on the basis of the percentage accuracy gives more rate of the return as compared to the value accuracy?10. Does the forecasting model having better performance in terms of the accuracy increase the profit of the investor when applied to the trading strategy?Apart from all questions outlined supra, it addresses various another questions regarding the design of the ANN. are there any approaches to solve the various issues in designing of the ANN like public figure of hidden layers and activation functions?This thesis pull up stakes attempt to suffice the supra question within th e constraints and field of the 6-year sample period (from 2002-2008) using historical data of various variables that affect the LSE. Further, this thesis will also attempt to answer these questions within the practical constraints of transaction costs and notes management imposed by real-world trading systems. Although a formal statement of the methodology or go that is being used is left until section 3, it makes sense to discuss the way in which this thesis will address the above question.In this thesis, various types of ANN will be trained using fundamental data, and technical data tally to the direction and value accuracy. A better trading system development methodology will be defined, and the performance of the forecasting model will be checked by using evaluation criteria rate of the return .In this way, the benefits of incorporating ANN into trading strategies in the stock market can be exposed and quantified. Once this process has been undertaken, it will be possible to answer the thesis all questions.1.3 Motivation of the ResearchStock market has always had been an attractive appeal for the researchers and financial investors and they have studied it over again to extract the useful strains to predict the movement of the stock market. The background is that if the researchers can make the accurate forecasting model, they can beat the market and can gain excess profit by applying the best trading strategy.Numerous financial investors have suffered lot of financial losses in the stock market as they were not aware of the stock market behavior. They had the problem that they were not able to decide when they should sell or buy the stock to gain profit. Nevertheless, finding out the best time for the investor to buy or to sell has remained a very difficult task because there are too some(prenominal) factors that may influence stock prices. If the investors have the accurate forecasting model, then they can predict the future behavior of the stock exchange and can gain profit. This solves the problem of the financial investors to some extent as they will not bear any financial loss. But it does not guarantee that the investor can have better profit or rate of return as compared to other investors unless he utilized the forecasting model using better trading strategy to invest money in the share market. This thesis tries to solve the above problem by providing the investor better forecasting model and trading strategies that can be applied to real-world trading systems.1.4 Justification of ResearchThere are several(prenominal) features of this academic research that distinguish it from previous academic researches. First of all, the time frame chosen for the investigation of the ANN (2002-08) in the London Stock change has neer been tested in the previous academic work. The importance of the period chosen is that there are two counter forces, which are oppose each other. On the one hand, the improvement of the UK and other countries economy after the 2001 financial crises happened in this period as a whole. On the other hand, this period also shows the gloaming in the stock markets from Jan, 2008 to Dec, 2008. So, it is important to test the forecasting model for bull, stable and bear market.Second, some of the research questions addressed in the above section, have not been investigated much in the academic studies, especially there is hardly any study which have done research on all the problems. Moreover, original hybrid based mixed neural network, better trading strategy and other modified approaches have been successfully being described and used in this studyFinally, there is a significant lack of work carried out in this area in the LSE. As such, this thesis draws heavily on results published chiefly within the United States and other countries from the academics .One interesting aspect of this thesis is that it will be interesting to see how much of the published research on exertion of ANN in stock market anomalies is applicable to the UK market. This is important as some of the academic studies (Pan et al (2005)) states that each stock market in the globe is different.1.5 Delimitations of electron orbitThe thesis concerns itself with historical data for the variables that affect London Stock modify during the period 2002 2008.1.6 Outline of the ReportThe remaining part of the thesis is organized in the following six chapters.The second chapter, the background and literary productions review, provides a brief introduction to the domain and also pertinent literary productions is reviewed to discuss the related published work of the previous researchers in terms of their contribution and content in the prediction of the stock exchange which serves as the building block for much of the research. Moreover, this literature review also gave solid justification why a particular set of ANN inputs are selected, which is important step harmonise to the Thawornwong and En ke (2004) and and some concepts from finance.The third chapter, the methodology, describes the go in detail, data and the mechanics or techniques that take place in the thesis along with the confirmable evidence. In addition, it also discuss the literature review for each step. Formulas and diagrams are shown to explain the techniques when necessary and it also covers issues as software and hardware used in the study.The fourth chapter, the implementation, discusses the approaches used in the implementation in detail based on the third chapter. It also covers such issues as software and hardware used in the study.The fifth chapter, the results and analysis, present the results according to the performance and benchmark measures that we have used in this study to compare with other models. It describes the choices that were needed in making model and justifies these choices in terms of the literature.The sixth chapter, conclusions and yet work, restates the thesis hypothesis, disc uss the conclusions drawn from the project and also thesis findings are put into perspective. Finally, the next step to improve the model performance are considered.Chapter 2 Background and Literature Review2 Background and Literature ReviewThis section of thesis explores the theory of three relevant fields of the monetary m Series, Stock Market, and Artificial Neural Networks, which together form the conceptual frameworks of the thesis as shown in the figure 1. Framework is provided to the trader to make quantitative and qualitative judgments concerning the future stock exchange movements. These three fields are reviewed in historical context, sketching out the development of those disciplines, and reviewing their academic credibility, and their cover to this thesis. In the case of Neural Networks, the field is reviewed with regard to that portion of the literature which flocks with applying neural network to the prediction of the stock exchange, the various type of technique s and neural networks used and an existing prediction model is extended to allow a more detailed analysis of the area than would otherwise have been possible.2.1 Financial Time Series2.1.1 IntroductionThe field of the financial time series prediction is a highly complex task due to the following apprehensions1. The financial time series frequently behaves like a random-walk process and predictability of such series is controversial issue which has been questioned in scope of EMH.2. The statistical property of the financial time series shift with the different time. Hellstrom and Holmstrom 1998).3. Financial time series is unremarkably noisy and the models which have been able to reduce such noise has been the better model in forecasting the value and direction of the stock exchange.4. In the long run, a new forecasting technique becomes a part of the process to be forecasted, i.e. it influences the process to be forecasted (Hellstrom and Holmstrom 1998).The first stratum is expl ained later in this section while discussing the EMH theory (Page).The graph of the capriciousness time series of FTSE 100 index from 14 June, 1993 to 29 December, 1998 and Dow Jones from 1928 to 2000 by Nelson areal (2008) and Negrea Bogdan Cristian (2007) illustrates the second localise of the FTSE 100 2.1.rin figure 2.1.1 and 2.2.2.These figures also shows that the volatility changes with period , in some periods FTSE 100 index value fluctuates so much and in some it remains calm.The third point is explained by the fact the events on a particular data affect the financial time series of the index, for example, the volatility of stocks or index increases before announcement of major stock specific news (Donders and Vorst 1996). These events are random and contribute noise in the time series which may make difficult to compare the two forecasting models difficult to compare as a random model can also release results. The fourth result can be explained by the example. Suppose a c ompany develop a model or technique that can unwanted all other models or techniques. The company will make lot of profits if this model is unattached to less people. But if this technique is open to all people with time due to its popularity, than the profits of the company will decrease as the company will not no longer take returns of this technique. This argument is described in Hellstrom and Holmstrom 1998 and Swingler 1994 .2.1.2 Efficient Market Hypothesis (EMH)EMH Theory has been a controversial issue for many years and there has been no shared agreed deal among the academic researchers, whether it is possible to predict the stock price. The people who believe that the prices follow random walk trend and cannot be predicted, are usually people who support the EMH theory. Academic researchers( Tino et al. 2000), have shown that the profit can be made by using historical information , whereas they also found difficult to verify the strong form due to lack of all private a nd public data.The EMH was developed in 1965 by Fama (Fama 1965, Fama 1970) and has found widely accepted (Anthony and Biggs 1995, Malkiel 1987, albumin 1988, Lowe and Webb 1991) in the academic community (Lawrence et al. 1996).It states that the future index or stock value is completely unpredictable given the historical information of the index or stocks. There are three forms of EMH weak, semi-strong, and strong form. The weak EMH rules out any form of forecasting based on the stocks history, since the stock prices follows a random walk in which in which successive changes have zero correlation (Hellstrom and Holmstrom 1998). In Semi Strong hypothesis, we consider all the publicly available information such as volume data and fundamental data. In strong form, we consider all the publicly and privately available information.Another ground for argument against the EMH is that different investors or traders react differently when a stock suddenly drops in a value. These different t ime perspectives will cause the unhoped change in the stock exchange, even if the new information has not entered in the scene. It may be possible to identify these situations and actually predict future changes (Hellstr om and Holmstrom 1998)The developer have proved it wrong by making forecasting models, this issue remains an interesting area. This controversy is just only matter of the word instanter in the definition. The studies in support of the argument of EMH rely on using the statistical tests and show that the technical indicators and tested models cant forecast. However, the studies against the argument uses the time delay between the point when new information enters the model or system and the point when the information has spread across over the globe and a equilibrium has been reached in the stock market with a new market price.2.1.3 Financial Time Series prognosticateFinancial Time series Forecasting aims to find underlying patterns, trends and forecast future ind ex value using using historical and current data or information. The historic values are continuous and equally spaced value over time and it represent various types of data . The main aim of the forecasting is to find an approximate social function function between the input variables and the forecasted or output value . According to Kalekar (2004), Time series forecasting assumes that a time series is a gang of a pattern and some error. The goal of the model using time series is to separate the pattern from the error by understanding the trend of the pattern and its seasonality Several methods are used in time series forecasting like moving average (section ) moving averages, linear regression with time etc. Time series differs from the technical analysis (section) that it is based on the samples and treated the values as non-chaotic time series. Many academic researchers have applied time series analysis in their forecasting model, but there has been no major success. 1a2.2 Sto ck Market2.2.1 IntroductionLet us consider the basic principle of the stock market.MM What are stocks?Stock refers to a share in the ownership of a corporation or company. They represent a claim of the stock owner on the companys earnings and assets and by buying more stocks the stake in the ownership is increased. In United States, stocks are ofttimes referred as shares, whereas in the UK they are also used as synonym for bonds, shares and equities.MM Why a Company issues a stock?The main reason for issuing stock is that the company wants to extract money by selling some part of the company. A company can chew up money by two ways debt financing (borrowing money by issuing bonds or loan from bank) and equity financing (borrowing money by issuing stocks).It is advantageous to raise the money by issuing stocks as the company has not to pay money back to the stock owners but they have to share the profit in the form of the dividends.MM What is Stock Pricing or price?A stock price i s the price of a single stock of a number of saleable stocks traded by the company. A company issue stock at static price, and the stock price may increase or decrease according to the trade. Normally the price of the stocks in the stock market is determined by the supply/demand equilibrium.MM What is a Stock Market?Stock Market or equity market is a public market where the trading and issuing of a company stock or derivates takes place either done the stock exchange or they may be traded privately and over-the counter markets. It is vital part of the economy as it provides opportunities to the company to raise money and also to the investors of having potential gain by selling or buying share. The stock market in the US includes the NYSE, NASDAQ, the AMEX as well as many regional exchanges. London Stock turn is the major stock exchange in the UK and Europe.As mentioned in the Chapter 1, in this study we forecast the London Stock Exchange (Section 2.2.2.).Investing in the stock ma rket is very risky as the stock market is uncertain and unsteady. The main aim of the investor is to get maximum returns from the money invested in the stock market, for which he has to study about the performance, price history about the stock company .So it is a broad category and according to Hellstrom (1997), there are four main ways to predict the stock market1. Fundamental analysis (section 2.2.3)2. technical analysis, (section 2.2.4)3. Time series forecasting (section 2.1)4. Machine breeding (ANN). (Section 2.3)2.2.2 London Stock ExchangeLondon Stock Exchange is one of the worlds oldest and largest stock exchanges in the world, which started its operation in 1698, when John mould commenced at this Office in Jonathans Coffee-house a list of stock and commodity prices called The Course of the Exchange and other things 2 .On March 3, 1801, London Stock Exchange was officially established with current lists of over 3,200 companies and has existed, in one or more form or anothe r for more than 300 years. In 2000, it unconquerable to become public and listed its shares on its own stock exchange in 2001. The London Stock market consists of the Main Market and Alternative Investments Market ( occupy), confident(p) EDX London (exchange for equity derivatives).The Main Market is in the first place for established companies with high performance, and come hand trades small-caps, or new enterprises with high growth potential.1 Since the launch of the AIM in 1995, AIM has become the most successful growth market in the world with over 3000 companies from across the globe have joined AIM. To quantify the London Stock Exchange, the autonomous FTSE Group (owned by the Financial Times and the London Stock Exchange) , sustains a series of indices comprising the FTSE 100 Index, FTSE 250 Index, FTSE 350 Index, FTSE All-Share, FTSE AIM-UK 50, FTSE AIM 100, FTSE AIM All-Share, FTSE SmallCap, FTSE technical school Mark 100 ,FTSE Tech Mark All-Share.4 FTSE 100 is the mo st famous and composite index calculated respectively from the top 100 largest companies whose shares are listed on the London Stock Exchange.The base date for calculation of FTSE 100 index is 1984. 2 In the UK, the FTSE 100 is frequently used by large investor, financial experts and the stock brokers as a guide to stock market performance. The FTSE index is calculated from the following formula2.2.3 Fundamental AnalysisFundamental Analysis focuses on evaluation of the future stock exchange movementsArtificial Neural Networks to forecast London Stock ExchangeArtificial Neural Networks to forecast London Stock ExchangeAbstractThis dissertation examines and analyzes the use of the Artificial Neural Networks (ANN) to forecast the London Stock Exchange. Specifically the importance of ANN to predict the future trends and value of the financial market is demonstrated. There are several contributions of this study to this area. The first contribution of this study is to find the best subse t of the interrelated factors at both local and international levels that affect the London stock exchange from the various input variables to be used in the future studies.We use novel aspects, in the sense that we base the forecast on both the fundamental and technical analysis.The second contribution of this study was to provide well defined methodology that can be used to create the financial models in future studies. In addition, this study also gives various theoretical arguments in support of the approaches used in the construction of the forecasting model by comparing the results of the previous studies and modifying some of the existing approaches and tested them. The study also compares the performance of the statistical methods and ANN in the forecasting problem. The main contribution of this thesis lies in comparing the performance of the five different types of ANN by constructing the individual forecasting model of them.Accuracy of models is compared by using different evaluation criteria and we develop different forecasting models based on both the direction and value accuracy of the forecasted value. The fourth contribution of this study is to investigate whether the hybrid approach corporate trust different individual forecasting models can outperform the individual forecasting models and compare the performance of the different hybrid approaches. Three hybrid approaches are used in this study, two are existing approaches and the third original approach, the mixed combined neural network -is being proposed in this study to the academic studies to forecast the stock exchange. The last contribution of this study lies in modifying the existing trading strategy to increase the profitability of the investor and support the argument that the investor earns more profit if the forecasting model is being developed by using the direction accuracy as compared to the value accuracy.The best forecasting classification accuracy obtained is 93% direction acc uracy and 0.0000831 (MSE) value accuracy which are better than the accuracies obtained by the previous academic studies. Moreover, this research validates the work of the existing studies that hybrid approach outperforms the individual forecasting model. In addition, the rate of the return that was attained in this thesis by using modified trading strategy is 120.14% which has shown significant improvement as compared to the 10.8493% rate of return of the existing trading strategy in other academics studies. The difference in the rate of return could be due to the fact that this study has developed good forecasting model or a better trading strategy.The experimental results show our method not only improves the accuracy rate, but also meet the short-term investors expectations. The results of this thesis also support the claim that some financial time series are not entirely random, and that contrary to the predictions of the efficient markets hypothesis (EMH), a trading strategy co uld be based solely on historical data. It was concluded that ANN do have good capabilities to forecast financial markets and, if properly trained, the investor could benefit from the use of this forecasting tool and trading strategy.Chapter 11 Introduction1.1 Background to the ResearchFinancial Time Series forecasting has attracted the interest of academic researchers and it has been addressed since the 1980.It is a challenging problem as the financial time series have complex behavior, resulting from a various factors such as economic, psychological or political reasons and they are non-stationary , noisy and deterministically chaotic.In todays world, almost every individual is influenced by the fluctuations in the stock market. Now days people prefer to invest money in the diversified financial funds or shares due to its high returns than depositing in the banks. But there is lot of risk in the stock market due to its high rate of uncertainty and volatility. To overcome such risk s, one of the main challenges for many years for the researchers is to develop the financial models that can describe the movements of the stock market and so far there had not been an optimum model.The complexity and bar of forecasting the stock exchange, and the emergence of data mining and computational intelligence techniques, as alternative techniques to the conventional statistical regression and Bayesian models with better performance, have paved the road for the increased usage of these techniques in fields of finance and economics. So, traders and investors have to rely on the various types of intelligent systems to make trading decisions. (Hameed,2008). A Computational Intelligence system such as neural networks, fuzzy logic, genetic algorithms etc has been widely established research area in the field of information systems. They have been used extensively in forecasting of the financial market and they have been quite successful to some extent .Although the number of pu rposed methods in financial time series is very large , but no one technique has been successful to consistently to beat the market.For last three decades, opposing views have existed between the academic communities and traders about the topic of Random walk theory and Efficient Market Hypothesis(EMH) due to the complexity of the financial time series and lot of publications by different researchers have gather various amount of evidences in support as well as against it. Lehman (1990), Haugen (1999) and Lo (2000) gave evidence of the deficiencies in EMH. But the investors such as Warren Buffet for long period of time have beaten the stock market consistently. Market Efficiency or Random walk theory in terms of stock trading in the financial market means that it is impossible to earn excess returns using any historic information.In essence, then, the new information is the only variable that causes to alter the price of the index as well as used to predict the reaching and timing. Bruce James Vanstone (2005) stated that in an efficient market, security prices should appear to be randomly generated. Both sides in this argument are supported by empirical results from the different markets across over the globe. This thesis does not wish to enter into the argument theoretically whether to accept or reject the EMH. Instead, this thesis concentrates on the methodologies to be used for development of the financial models using the artificial neural networks (ANN), compares the forecasting capabilities of the various ANN and hybrid based approach models, develop the trading strategy that can help the investor and leaves the research of this thesis to stack up with the published work of other researchers which document ways to predict the stock market. In recent years and since its inception, ANN has gained momentum and has been widely used as a viable computational intelligent technique to forecast the stock market.The main challenge of the traders is to know the s ignals when the stock market deviates and to take advantage of such situations. The data used by the traders to remove the uncertainty in the stock market and to take trading decisions whether to buy or sell the stock using the information process is noisy. Information not contained in the known information subset used to forecast is considered to be noise and such environment is characterized by a low signal-to noise ratio. Refenes et.al (1993) and Thawornwong and Enke (2004) described that the relationship between the security price or returns and the variables that constitute that price (return), changes over time and this fact is widely accepted within the academic institutes.In other words, the stock markets structural mechanics may change over time which causes the effect on the index also change. Ferreira et al. (2004) described that the relationship between the variables and the predicted index is non linear and the Artificial neural networks (ANN) have the characteristic to represent such complex non-linear relationship. This thesis presents the mechanical London Stock Market trading system that uses the ANN forecasting model to extract the rules from daily index movements and generate signal to the investors and traders whether to buy, sell or hold a stock. The figure 1 and 2 represents the stock exchange and ANN forecasting model. By viewing the stock exchange as a financial market that takes historical and current data or information as an input, the investors react to this information based on their understanding, speculations, analysis etc.It would now seem very difficult to predict the stock market, characterized by high noise, nonlinearities, using only high absolute frequency (weekly, daily) historical prices. Surprisingly though, there are anomalies in the behavior of the stock market that cannot be explained under the existing paradigm of market efficiency. Studies discussed in the literature review have been able to predict the stock marke t accurately to some extent and it seems that forecasting model developed by them have been able to pick some of the hidden patterns in the inherently non-linear price series. While it is true that forecasting model need to be designed and optimized with care in order to get accurate results .Further, it aims to contribute knowledge that will one day lead to a standard or optimum model for the prediction of the stock exchange. As such, it aims to present a well defined methodology that can be used to create the forecasting models and it is hoped that this thesis can address many of the deficiencies of the published research in this area. In the last decade, there has been plethora of the ANN models that were developed due to the absence of the well defined methodology, which were difficult to compare due to less published work and some of them have shown superior results in their domains. Moreover, this study also compares the predictive power of the ANN with the statistical models. Normally the approach used by the academic researchers in the forecasting use technical analysis and some of them include the fundamental analysis. The technical analysis uses only historical data (past price) to determine the movement of the stock exchange and fundamental analysis is based on external information (like interest rates, prices and returns of other asset) that comes from the economic system surrounding the financial market.Building a trading system using forecasting model and testing it on the evaluation criteria is the only practical way to evaluate the forecasting model. There has been so much prior research on identifying the appropriate trading strategy for forecasting problem. This thesis does not wish to enter into the argument which strategy is best or not. Although, the importance of the trading strategy can hardly be underestimated, but this thesis concentrates on using one of the existing strategy, modify it and compares the return by the forecasting models . But there has always been debate in the academic studies over how to effectively benchmark the model of ANN for trading. Some of the academic researchers stated that predicting the direction of the stock exchange may lead to higher profits while some of them supported the view that predicting the value of the stock exchange may lead to higher rate of return. Azoff (1994) and Thawornwong and Enke (2004) discussed about this debate in their study.In essence, there is a need for a formalized development methodology for developing the ANN financial models which can be used as a benchmark for trading systems. All of this is accommodated by this thesis.1.2 line Statement and Research QuestionThe studies mentioned above have generally indicated that ANN, as used in the stock market, can be a valuable tool to the investor .Due to some of the problems discussed above, we are not still able to answer the questionCan ANNs be used to develop the accurate forecasting model that can be used in the trading systems to earn profit for the investor?From the variety of academic research summarized in the literature review, it is clear that a great deal of research in this area has taken place by different academic researchers and they have gathered various amounts of evidences in support as well as against it. This directly threatens the use of ANN applicability to the financial industry.Apart from the previous question, this research addresses various other problems1. Which ANN have better performance in the forecasting of the London Stock Exchange from the five different types of the ANN which are widely used in the academics?2. Which subset of the potential input variables from 2002-08 affect the LSE?3. Do international stock exchanges, currency exchange rate and other macroeconomic factors affect the LSE?4. How much the performance of the forecasting model is improved by using the regression analysis in the factor selection?5. Can use of the technical indicators improve t he performance of the forecasting model?6. Which learning algorithm in the training of the ANN give the better performance?7. Does Hybrid-based Forecasting Models give better performance than the individual ANN forecasting models?8. Which Hybrid-based models have the better performance and what are the limitations of using them?9. Does the forecasting model developed on the basis of the percentage accuracy gives more rate of the return as compared to the value accuracy?10. Does the forecasting model having better performance in terms of the accuracy increase the profit of the investor when applied to the trading strategy?Apart from all questions outlined above, it addresses various another questions regarding the design of the ANN. argon there any approaches to solve the various issues in designing of the ANN like number of hidden layers and activation functions?This thesis will attempt to answer the above question within the constraints and scope of the 6-year sample period (from 2 002-2008) using historical data of various variables that affect the LSE. Further, this thesis will also attempt to answer these questions within the practical constraints of transaction costs and money management imposed by real-world trading systems. Although a formal statement of the methodology or steps that is being used is left until section 3, it makes sense to discuss the way in which this thesis will address the above question.In this thesis, various types of ANN will be trained using fundamental data, and technical data according to the direction and value accuracy. A better trading system development methodology will be defined, and the performance of the forecasting model will be checked by using evaluation criteria rate of the return .In this way, the benefits of incorporating ANN into trading strategies in the stock market can be exposed and quantified. Once this process has been undertaken, it will be possible to answer the thesis all questions.1.3 Motivation of the R esearchStock market has always had been an attractive appeal for the researchers and financial investors and they have studied it over again to extract the useful patterns to predict the movement of the stock market. The reason is that if the researchers can make the accurate forecasting model, they can beat the market and can gain excess profit by applying the best trading strategy.Numerous financial investors have suffered lot of financial losses in the stock market as they were not aware of the stock market behavior. They had the problem that they were not able to decide when they should sell or buy the stock to gain profit. Nevertheless, finding out the best time for the investor to buy or to sell has remained a very difficult task because there are too many factors that may influence stock prices. If the investors have the accurate forecasting model, then they can predict the future behavior of the stock exchange and can gain profit. This solves the problem of the financial inv estors to some extent as they will not bear any financial loss. But it does not guarantee that the investor can have better profit or rate of return as compared to other investors unless he utilized the forecasting model using better trading strategy to invest money in the share market. This thesis tries to solve the above problem by providing the investor better forecasting model and trading strategies that can be applied to real-world trading systems.1.4 Justification of ResearchThere are several features of this academic research that distinguish it from previous academic researches. First of all, the time frame chosen for the investigation of the ANN (2002-08) in the London Stock Exchange has neer been tested in the previous academic work. The importance of the period chosen is that there are two counter forces, which are opposing each other. On the one hand, the improvement of the UK and other countries economy after the 2001 financial crises happened in this period as a whole . On the other hand, this period also shows the crepuscule in the stock markets from Jan, 2008 to Dec, 2008. So, it is important to test the forecasting model for bull, stable and bear market.Second, some of the research questions addressed in the above section, have not been investigated much in the academic studies, especially there is hardly any study which have done research on all the problems. Moreover, original hybrid based mixed neural network, better trading strategy and other modified approaches have been successfully being described and used in this studyFinally, there is a significant lack of work carried out in this area in the LSE. As such, this thesis draws heavily on results published mainly within the United States and other countries from the academics .One interesting aspect of this thesis is that it will be interesting to see how much of the published research on application of ANN in stock market anomalies is applicable to the UK market. This is important as so me of the academic studies (Pan et al (2005)) states that each stock market in the globe is different.1.5 Delimitations of scopeThe thesis concerns itself with historical data for the variables that affect London Stock Exchange during the period 2002 2008.1.6 Outline of the ReportThe remaining part of the thesis is organized in the following six chapters.The second chapter, the background and literature review, provides a brief introduction to the domain and also pertinent literature is reviewed to discuss the related published work of the previous researchers in terms of their contribution and content in the prediction of the stock exchange which serves as the building block for much of the research. Moreover, this literature review also gave solid justification why a particular set of ANN inputs are selected, which is important step according to the Thawornwong and Enke (2004) and and some concepts from finance.The third chapter, the methodology, describes the steps in detail, da ta and the mechanics or techniques that take place in the thesis along with the empirical evidence. In addition, it also discuss the literature review for each step. Formulas and diagrams are shown to explain the techniques when necessary and it also covers issues as software and hardware used in the study.The fourth chapter, the implementation, discusses the approaches used in the implementation in detail based on the third chapter. It also covers such issues as software and hardware used in the study.The fifth chapter, the results and analysis, present the results according to the performance and benchmark measures that we have used in this study to compare with other models. It describes the choices that were needed in making model and justifies these choices in terms of the literature.The sixth chapter, conclusions and only work, restates the thesis hypothesis, discuss the conclusions drawn from the project and also thesis findings are put into perspective. Finally, the next st eps to improve the model performance are considered.Chapter 2 Background and Literature Review2 Background and Literature ReviewThis section of thesis explores the theory of three relevant fields of the Financial Time Series, Stock Market, and Artificial Neural Networks, which together form the conceptual frameworks of the thesis as shown in the figure 1. Framework is provided to the trader to make quantitative and qualitative judgments concerning the future stock exchange movements. These three fields are reviewed in historical context, sketching out the development of those disciplines, and reviewing their academic credibility, and their application to this thesis. In the case of Neural Networks, the field is reviewed with regard to that portion of the literature which deals with applying neural network to the prediction of the stock exchange, the various type of techniques and neural networks used and an existing prediction model is extended to allow a more detailed analysis of t he area than would otherwise have been possible.2.1 Financial Time Series2.1.1 IntroductionThe field of the financial time series prediction is a highly complex task due to the following reasons1. The financial time series frequently behaves like a random-walk process and predictability of such series is controversial issue which has been questioned in scope of EMH.2. The statistical property of the financial time series shift with the different time. Hellstrom and Holmstrom 1998).3. Financial time series is usually noisy and the models which have been able to reduce such noise has been the better model in forecasting the value and direction of the stock exchange.4. In the long run, a new forecasting technique becomes a part of the process to be forecasted, i.e. it influences the process to be forecasted (Hellstrom and Holmstrom 1998).The first point is explained later in this section while discussing the EMH theory (Page).The graph of the volatility time series of FTSE 100 index fr om 14 June, 1993 to 29 December, 1998 and Dow Jones from 1928 to 2000 by Nelson areal (2008) and Negrea Bogdan Cristian (2007) illustrates the second point of the FTSE 100 2.1.rin figure 2.1.1 and 2.2.2.These figures also shows that the volatility changes with period , in some periods FTSE 100 index value fluctuates so much and in some it remains calm.The third point is explained by the fact the events on a particular data affect the financial time series of the index, for example, the volatility of stocks or index increases before announcement of major stock specific news (Donders and Vorst 1996). These events are random and contribute noise in the time series which may make difficult to compare the two forecasting models difficult to compare as a random model can also obtain results. The fourth result can be explained by the example. Suppose a company develop a model or technique that can pariah all other models or techniques. The company will make lot of profits if this model is available to less people. But if this technique is available to all people with time due to its popularity, than the profits of the company will decrease as the company will not no longer take advantage of this technique. This argument is described in Hellstrom and Holmstrom 1998 and Swingler 1994 .2.1.2 Efficient Market Hypothesis (EMH)EMH Theory has been a controversial issue for many years and there has been no interchangeable agreed deal among the academic researchers, whether it is possible to predict the stock price. The people who believe that the prices follow random walk trend and cannot be predicted, are usually people who support the EMH theory. Academic researchers( Tino et al. 2000), have shown that the profit can be made by using historical information , whereas they also found difficult to verify the strong form due to lack of all private and public data.The EMH was developed in 1965 by Fama (Fama 1965, Fama 1970) and has found widely accepted (Anthony and Biggs 199 5, Malkiel 1987, fair 1988, Lowe and Webb 1991) in the academic community (Lawrence et al. 1996).It states that the future index or stock value is completely unpredictable given the historical information of the index or stocks. There are three forms of EMH weak, semi-strong, and strong form. The weak EMH rules out any form of forecasting based on the stocks history, since the stock prices follows a random walk in which in which successive changes have zero correlation (Hellstrom and Holmstrom 1998). In Semi Strong hypothesis, we consider all the publicly available information such as volume data and fundamental data. In strong form, we consider all the publicly and privately available information.Another reason for argument against the EMH is that different investors or traders react differently when a stock suddenly drops in a value. These different time perspectives will cause the unforeseen change in the stock exchange, even if the new information has not entered in the scene. It may be possible to identify these situations and actually predict future changes (Hellstr om and Holmstrom 1998)The developer have proved it wrong by making forecasting models, this issue remains an interesting area. This controversy is just only matter of the word in a flash in the definition. The studies in support of the argument of EMH rely on using the statistical tests and show that the technical indicators and tested models cant forecast. However, the studies against the argument uses the time delay between the point when new information enters the model or system and the point when the information has spread across over the globe and a equilibrium has been reached in the stock market with a new market price.2.1.3 Financial Time Series ForecastingFinancial Time series Forecasting aims to find underlying patterns, trends and forecast future index value using using historical and current data or information. The historic values are continuous and equally spaced value over time and it represent various types of data . The main aim of the forecasting is to find an approximate chromosome mapping function between the input variables and the forecasted or output value . According to Kalekar (2004), Time series forecasting assumes that a time series is a conclave of a pattern and some error. The goal of the model using time series is to separate the pattern from the error by understanding the trend of the pattern and its seasonality Several methods are used in time series forecasting like moving average (section ) moving averages, linear regression with time etc. Time series differs from the technical analysis (section) that it is based on the samples and treated the values as non-chaotic time series. Many academic researchers have applied time series analysis in their forecasting model, but there has been no major success. 1a2.2 Stock Market2.2.1 IntroductionLet us consider the basics of the stock market.MM What are stocks?Stock refers to a share in the ownership of a corporation or company. They represent a claim of the stock owner on the companys earnings and assets and by buying more stocks the stake in the ownership is increased. In United States, stocks are a lot referred as shares, whereas in the UK they are also used as synonym for bonds, shares and equities.MM Why a Company issues a stock?The main reason for issuing stock is that the company wants to raise money by selling some part of the company. A company can raise money by two ways debt financing (borrowing money by issuing bonds or loan from bank) and equity financing (borrowing money by issuing stocks).It is advantageous to raise the money by issuing stocks as the company has not to pay money back to the stock owners but they have to share the profit in the form of the dividends.MM What is Stock Pricing or price?A stock price is the price of a single stock of a number of saleable stocks traded by the company. A company issue stock at static price, and the stock pric e may increase or decrease according to the trade. Normally the price of the stocks in the stock market is determined by the supply/demand equilibrium.MM What is a Stock Market?Stock Market or equity market is a public market where the trading and issuing of a company stock or derivates takes place either through with(predicate) the stock exchange or they may be traded privately and over-the counter markets. It is vital part of the economy as it provides opportunities to the company to raise money and also to the investors of having potential gain by selling or buying share. The stock market in the US includes the NYSE, NASDAQ, the AMEX as well as many regional exchanges. London Stock Exchange is the major stock exchange in the UK and Europe.As mentioned in the Chapter 1, in this study we forecast the London Stock Exchange (Section 2.2.2.).Investing in the stock market is very risky as the stock market is uncertain and unsteady. The main aim of the investor is to get maximum return s from the money invested in the stock market, for which he has to study about the performance, price history about the stock company .So it is a broad category and according to Hellstrom (1997), there are four main ways to predict the stock market1. Fundamental analysis (section 2.2.3)2. Technical analysis, (section 2.2.4)3. Time series forecasting (section 2.1)4. Machine learning (ANN). (Section 2.3)2.2.2 London Stock ExchangeLondon Stock Exchange is one of the worlds oldest and largest stock exchanges in the world, which started its operation in 1698, when John dramatis personae commenced at this Office in Jonathans Coffee-house a list of stock and commodity prices called The Course of the Exchange and other things 2 .On March 3, 1801, London Stock Exchange was officially established with current lists of over 3,200 companies and has existed, in one or more form or another for more than 300 years. In 2000, it distinguishable to become public and listed its shares on its own sto ck exchange in 2001. The London Stock market consists of the Main Market and Alternative Investments Market (AIM), increase EDX London (exchange for equity derivatives).The Main Market is mainly for established companies with high performance, and AIM hand trades small-caps, or new enterprises with high growth potential.1 Since the launch of the AIM in 1995, AIM has become the most successful growth market in the world with over 3000 companies from across the globe have joined AIM. To evaluate the London Stock Exchange, the autonomous FTSE Group (owned by the Financial Times and the London Stock Exchange) , sustains a series of indices comprising the FTSE 100 Index, FTSE 250 Index, FTSE 350 Index, FTSE All-Share, FTSE AIM-UK 50, FTSE AIM 100, FTSE AIM All-Share, FTSE SmallCap, FTSE Tech Mark 100 ,FTSE Tech Mark All-Share.4 FTSE 100 is the most famous and composite index calculated respectively from the top 100 largest companies whose shares are listed on the London Stock Exchange.T he base date for calculation of FTSE 100 index is 1984. 2 In the UK, the FTSE 100 is frequently used by large investor, financial experts and the stock brokers as a guide to stock market performance. The FTSE index is calculated from the following formula2.2.3 Fundamental AnalysisFundamental Analysis focuses on evaluation of the future stock exchange movements

That Old House! :: Descriptive Essay Examples, narrative, observation

That Old House Just last summer my parents bought a house. It is a becoming place with hard wood floors and nice woodwork, but then there is my path in then basement. The first time I saw my room I almost cried. I hated it. I wasnt given a choice whether I standardisedd it or not. My parents didnt seem to see how I snarl and there was no affaire I felt I could do about it. The floor was covered with leaves and other debris. The left wall was not yet finished. The studs and discolor insulation were still exposed. The front wall was half rotten with water damage and the rest of the adjoining walls were littered with holes. The windows were coated with a layer of dust, cobwebs, and bugs, just about dead, some alive. The door was yet to be hung on its hinges and two large holes are in the ceiling that have yet to be fixed. As whatever one can see I had complete provocation to feel the way I did. I ether had to except it as my room or move out, which I was not financially sta ble to do at the time. I felt stuck and pissed off that I was put into that kind of position. I had wondered why my parents would want to do this to me, did they know how I felt,sure didnt seem like it. At the time this all happened I did my best to ignore it all. I went ladder to the comfort of my girlfriend. Anything could have gone wrong but as long as she was there felt that I was happy. I slept at her apartment so I was able to avoid my room completely but a few weeks later things became rough between us and we broke up. She was the only thing that kept my worries at bay. She was my one source of comfort and she was gone for good. I was now left with a life that resembled my room, torn apart and crappy. My life had seemed like it couldnt get any worse. I had spent the next few days sulking and feeling sorry for my self, not caring about anything at all. Soon I started to realize that sitting around sulking was only going to make things worse.

Comparing the Book and Movie Version of The Grapes of Wrath Essay

The Grapes of individual retirement account Comparing Book and Movie carrefour attempted to establish a sense of historic context by inserting two carve ups of prose on the screen immediately following the opening credits In the central part of the United States of America lies a limited area called the disperse Bowl, because of its lack of rains. Here drought and poverty combined to deprive some(prenominal) farmers from their land. This is the story of one farmers family, driven from their fields by natural disasters and economic changes beyond anyones control and their great journey in lookup of peace, security, and another home. In its description of a limited area called the Dust Bowl, the prose serves to limit the scope of the tragedy ab place to be witnessed to a specific, isolated part of the nation. The simple olden tense used in the final conviction of the first paragraph underscores a feeling that this is all over by the time of the film, 1940. The second par agraph prepares us not for Steinbecks picture of failure on a national scale but for the story of ones farmers family who are victims of changes beyond anyones control, and who testament set out on a heart-rending journey in search of peace, security, and another home. One can already notice in this opening lines of the film that the directors attempted to guardedly avoid attaching specific blame in this potentially controversial film. The possibility of social change wrought by violent by violent negate suggested in the novel will not redden be hinted at. The movie only concentrees on the Joads, a migrant family from the Dust Bowl region, while the novels focus shifts from the Joads to the situation of all the migrants who went to Californi... ...hile the peasants will keep trudging fling off a long, hard road. The Grapes of Wrath as a novel argues that in order to survive spiritually and physically on the planet man mustiness commit himself to man and environment, wh ereas the film version focuses on the traditional figure of the isolated individual who will make things right. Sources Cited and Consulted Davis, R. M. (editor). Steinbeck A Collection of Critical Essays. Englewood Cliffs, raw Jersey Prentice-Hall, 1972. Pratt, John Clark. John Steinbeck A Critical Essay. Grand Rapids, Michigan William B. Eerdmans, 1970. Steinbeck, John. The Grapes of Wrath . New York Penguin Books, 1986. The Grapes of Wrath Directed by John Ford Produced by Daryl F. Zanuck 20th Century Fox, 1940. Wyatt, David ed. New Essays on The Grapes of Wrath. Cambridge Cambridge University Press, 1990. Comparing the Book and Movie Version of The Grapes of Wrath EssayThe Grapes of Wrath Comparing Book and Movie Ford attempted to establish a sense of historical context by inserting two paragraphs of prose on the screen immediately following the opening credits In the central part of the United States of America lies a limited area called the Dust Bowl, be cause of its lack of rains. Here drought and poverty combined to deprive many farmers from their land. This is the story of one farmers family, driven from their fields by natural disasters and economic changes beyond anyones control and their great journey in search of peace, security, and another home. In its description of a limited area called the Dust Bowl, the prose serves to limit the scope of the tragedy about to be witnessed to a specific, isolated part of the nation. The simple past tense used in the final sentence of the first paragraph underscores a feeling that this is all over by the time of the film, 1940. The second paragraph prepares us not for Steinbecks picture of failure on a national scale but for the story of ones farmers family who are victims of changes beyond anyones control, and who will set out on a heart-rending journey in search of peace, security, and another home. One can already notice in this opening lines of the film that the directors attempt ed to carefully avoid attaching specific blame in this potentially controversial film. The possibility of social change wrought by violent by violent conflict suggested in the novel will not even be hinted at. The movie only focuses on the Joads, a migrant family from the Dust Bowl region, while the novels focus shifts from the Joads to the situation of all the migrants who went to Californi... ...hile the peasants will keep trudging down a long, hard road. The Grapes of Wrath as a novel argues that in order to survive spiritually and physically on the planet man must commit himself to man and environment, whereas the film version focuses on the traditional figure of the isolated individual who will make things right. Sources Cited and Consulted Davis, R. M. (editor). Steinbeck A Collection of Critical Essays. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey Prentice-Hall, 1972. Pratt, John Clark. John Steinbeck A Critical Essay. Grand Rapids, Michigan William B. Eerdmans, 1970. Steinbeck, John. The Grapes of Wrath . New York Penguin Books, 1986. The Grapes of Wrath Directed by John Ford Produced by Daryl F. Zanuck 20th Century Fox, 1940. Wyatt, David ed. New Essays on The Grapes of Wrath. Cambridge Cambridge University Press, 1990.