A study on the investment strategy using neural network models in the Korean Stock Market

Since the late 1980s, an increasing number of neural network models have been studied in the areas of financial prediction and analysis. The purpose of this study is to investigate the possibility of building a neural network model that is able to construct a profitable trading strategy in the Korean Stock Market. This study classifies stocks into the future market winners and losers from the publicly available accounting information and builds portfolios based on this information. The performances of the winner portfolios and the loser portfolios are compared with each other and against the market index. The empirical result of this research is consistent with the traditional fundamental analysis where it is claimed that the financial statements contain firm values that may not be fully reflected in stock prices without delay. Despite the supporting empirical evidence, it is somewhat inconclusive as to whether or not the abnormal return in excess of market return is the result of the extra knowledge obtained in the neural network models derived from the historical accounting data. This research attempts to open another avenue using neural network models for searching for evidence against market efficiency where statistics and intuition have played a major role.