Stock exchange trading optimization algorithm: a human-inspired method for global optimization

In this paper, a human-inspired optimization algorithm called stock exchange trading optimization (SETO) for solving numerical and engineering problems is introduced. The inspiration source of this optimizer is the behavior of traders and stock price changes in the stock market. Traders use various fundamental and technical analysis methods to gain maximum profit. SETO mathematically models the technical trading strategy of traders to perform optimization. It contains three main actuators including rising, falling, and exchange. These operators navigate the search agents toward the global optimum. The proposed algorithm is compared with seven popular meta-heuristic optimizers on forty single-objective unconstraint numerical functions and four engineering design problems. The statistical results obtained on test problems show that SETO is capable of providing competitive and promising performances compared with counterpart algorithms in solving optimization problems of different dimensions, especially 1000-dimension problems. Out of 40 numerical functions, the SETO algorithm has achieved the global optimum on 36 functions, and out of 4 engineering problems, it has obtained the best results on 3 problems.