Stock price prediction using improved extreme learning machine methods during the Covid-19 pandemic and selection of appropriate prediction method

Coronavirus disease (Covid-19) has created uncertainty in all countries around the world, resulting in enormous human suffering and global recession. Because the economic impact of this pandemic is still unknown, it would be intriguing to study the incorporation of the Covid-19 period into stock price prediction. The goal of this study is to use an improved extreme learning machine (ELM), whose parameters are optimized by four meta-heuristics: harmony search (HS), social spider algorithm (SSA), artificial bee colony algorithm (ABCA) and particle swarm optimization (PSO) for stock price prediction.

In this study, the activation functions and hidden layer neurons of the ELM were optimized using four different meta-heuristics. The proposed method is tested in five sectors. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) and Duncan's multiple range test were used to compare the prediction methods. First, ANOVA was applied to the test data for verification and validation of the proposed methods. Duncan's multiple range test was used to identify a suitable method based on the ANOVA results.

The main finding of this study is that the hybrid methodology can improve the prediction accuracy during the pre and post Covid-19 period for stock price prediction. The mean absolute percent error value of each method showed that the prediction errors of the proposed methods were all under 0.13106 in the worst case, which appears to be a remarkable outcome for such a difficult prediction task.

The novelty of this study is the use of four hybrid ELM methods to evaluate the automotive, technology, food, construction and energy sectors during the pre and post Covid-19 period. Additionally, an appropriate method was determined for each sector.