The book covers a wide array of subjects which range from economic rationales to rigorous portfolio back-testing and encompass both data processing and model interpretability. Common supervised learning algorithms such as tree models and neural networks are explained in the context of style investing and the reader can also dig into more complex techniques like autoencoder asset returns, Bayesian additive trees, and causal models.
All topics are illustrated with self-contained R code samples and snippets that are applied to a large public dataset that contains over 90 predictors. The material, along with the content of the book, is available online so that readers can reproduce and enhance the examples at their convenience. If you have even a basic knowledge of quantitative finance, this combination of theoretical concepts and practical illustrations will help you learn quickly and deepen your financial and technical expertise.
Guillaume Coqueret is associate professor of finance and data science at EMLYON Business School. His recent research revolves around applications of machine learning tools in financial economics.
Tony Guida is executive director at RAM Active Investments. He serves as chair of the machineByte think tank and is the author of Big Data and Machine Learning in Quantitative Investment.