Assessing fat-tailed sequential forecast distributions for the Dow-Jones index with logarithmic scoring rules

2007

We use the logarithmic scoring rule for distributions to assess a variety of fat-tailed sequential forecasting distributions for the Dow-Jones industrial stock index from 1980 to the present. The methodology applies Bruno de Finetti''s contributions to understanding how to compare the quality of different coherent forecasting distributions for the same sequence of observations, using proper scoring rules. Four different forms of forecasting distributions are compared: a mixture Normal, a mixture of convex combinations of three Normal distributions, a mixture exponential power distribution, and a mixture of a convex combination of three exponential power distributions. The mixture linear com…