Predicting stock price of construction companies using weighted ensemble learning

Modeling the behavior of stock price data has always been one of the challenging applications of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) due to its high complexity and dependence on various conditions. Recent studies show that this will be difficult to do with just one learning model. The problem can be more complex for companies in the construction sector, due to the dependency of their behavior on more conditions. This study aims to provide a hybrid model for improving the accuracy of prediction for the stock price index of companies in the construction section. The contribution of this paper can be considered as follows: First, a combination of several prediction models is used to predict stock prices so that learning models can cover each other's errors. In this research, an ensemble model based on Artificial Neural Network (ANN), Gaussian Process Regression (GPR), and Classification and Regression Tree (CART) is presented for predicting the stock price index. Second, the optimization technique is used to determine the effect of each learning model on the prediction result. For this purpose, first, all three mentioned algorithms process the data simultaneously and perform the prediction operation. Then, using the Cuckoo Search (CS) algorithm, the output weight of each algorithm is determined as a coefficient. Finally, using the ensemble technique, these results are combined and the final output is generated through weighted averaging on optimal coefficients. The proposed system was implemented, and its efficiency was evaluated by real stock data of construction companies. The results showed that using CS optimization in the proposed ensemble system is highly effective in reducing prediction error. According to the results, the proposed system can predict the price index with an average accuracy of 96.6%, which shows a reduction of at least 2.4% in prediction error compared to the previous methods. Comparing the evaluation results of the proposed system with similar algorithms indicates that our model is more accurate and can be useful for predicting the stock price index in real-world scenarios.