Postgraduate Course: Financial Markets Applications of Deep and Reinforcement Learning (CMSE11687)
Course Outline
| School | Business School |
College | College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences |
| Credit level (Normal year taken) | SCQF Level 11 (Postgraduate) |
Availability | Available to all students |
| SCQF Credits | 10 |
ECTS Credits | 5 |
| Summary | This course focuses on the implementation and evaluation of state-of-the-art machine learning systems in financial time-series like high-frequency trading; specifically, it covers practical aspects of machine learning and focuses on industry-related (i.e., hedge funds, and prop trading firms) experimental issues in deep learning and neural networks. Students who take this course will obtain experience in the design, implementation, training, and evaluation of machine learning systems for high-frequency trading stock price forecasting tasks. |
| Course description |
Standard methods and theories in finance and economics are ill-equipped to capture complex data signals presented in financial and related data. Deep learning approaches offer more useful insights into these complex signals generated by big data. This course, which covers practical aspects of state-of-the-art deep learning and focuses on industry-related experimental issues in the application of deep learning and neural networks to financial microstructure time-series such as high-frequency trading data, will provide students with tools that are relevant to the big data challenges in financial economics.
Outline content
- High-Frequency Trading (HFT) and Limit Order Books
- Application of Feed-forward Network architectures to HFT data
- Optimisation and Learning Rules
- Regularisation and Normalisation
- Neural Networks for Classification
- Autoencoders
- Convolutional Neural Networks
- Recurrent Neural Networks
- Reinforcement Learning
- Transformers
Student learning experience
Formal teaching occurs in Seminars. Much of the learning will be the result of students own reading and reflection, and preparation for seminars and the final project. A high level of student participation is expected, through discussions in class.
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Information for Visiting Students
| Pre-requisites | None |
| High Demand Course? |
Yes |
Course Delivery Information
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| Academic year 2025/26, Available to all students (SV1)
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Quota: None |
| Course Start |
Semester 2 |
Timetable |
Timetable |
| Learning and Teaching activities (Further Info) |
Total Hours:
100
(
Seminar/Tutorial Hours 10,
Programme Level Learning and Teaching Hours 2,
Directed Learning and Independent Learning Hours
88 )
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| Assessment (Further Info) |
Written Exam
0 %,
Coursework
100 %,
Practical Exam
0 %
|
| Additional Information (Assessment) |
100% Essay (Individual) - 2,000 words - Assesses all course Learning Outcomes |
| Feedback |
Formative: Feedback provided throughout courses.
Summative: Feedback will be provided on the assessment within agreed deadlines. |
| No Exam Information |
Learning Outcomes
On completion of this course, the student will be able to:
- Develop critical experience in the design, implementation, training, and evaluation of machine learning systems.
- Critically evaluate technical papers, and explain their relevance.
- Design and carry out appropriate experiments, and explain the methodology involved.
- Critically evaluate machine learning systems.
- Write a scholarly report, suitably structured and with supporting evidence.
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Reading List
Ian Goodfellow, Yoshua Bengio, and Aaron Courville, Deep Learning, 2016, MIT Press.
Michael Nielsen, Neural Networks and Deep Learning, 2016. Online at: http://neuralnetworksanddeeplearning.com
Christopher M Bishop, Neural Networks for Pattern Recognition, 1995, Clarendon Press. |
Additional Information
| Graduate Attributes and Skills |
Not entered |
| Keywords | High-Frequency Trading,Limit Order Books,Neural Networks,Reinforcement Learning,Transformers |
Contacts
| Course organiser | Dr Adam Ntakaris
Tel:
Email: Adamantios.Ntakaris@ed.ac.uk |
Course secretary | |
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