A novel hybrid approach to forecast crude oil futures using intraday data

Prediction of oil prices is an implausible task due to the multifaceted nature of oil markets. This study presents two novel hybrid models to forecast WTI and Brent crude oil prices using combinations of machine learning and nature inspired algorithms. The first approach, MARSplines-IPSO-BPNN, Multivariate Adaptive Regression Splines (MARSPlines) find the important variables that affect crude oil prices. Then, the selected variables are fed into an Improved Particle Swarm Optimization (IPSO) method to obtain the best estimates of the parameters of the Backpropagation Neural Network (BPNN). Once these parameters are obtained, the variables are fed into the BPNN model to generate the required forecasts. The second approach, MARSplines-FPA-BPNN, generates the parameters of BPNN through the Flower Pollination Algorithm (FPA). The forecasting ability of these new models is compared to certain benchmark models. The findings document that the MARSplines-FPA-BPNN model performs better than the other competitive models.