A comparative study of approaches to forecast the correct trading actions

This paper addresses the problem of decision making in the context of financial markets, more specifically, the problem of forecasting the correct trading action for a certain future horizon. We study and compare two alternative ways of addressing these forecasting tasks: (a) using standard numeric prediction models to forecast the variation on the prices of the target asset and, on a second stage, transform these numeric predictions into a decision according to some predefined decision rules; and (b) use models that directly forecast the right decision thus ignoring the intermediate numeric forecasting task. The objective of our study is to determine if both strategies provide identical results or if there is any particular advantage worth being considered that may distinguish each alternative in the context of financial markets.