Predicting Gold and Silver Price Direction Using Tree-Based Classifiers
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Gold is often used by investors as a hedge against inflation or adverse economic times. Consequently, it is important for investors to have accurate forecasts of gold prices. This paper uses several machine learning tree-based classifiers (bagging, stochastic gradient boosting, random forests) to predict the price direction of gold and silver exchange traded funds. Decision tree bagging, stochastic gradient boosting, and random forests predictions of gold and silver price direction are much more accurate than those obtained from logit models. For a 20-day forecast horizon, tree bagging, stochastic gradient boosting, and random forests produce accuracy rates of between 85% and 90% while logit models produce accuracy rates of between 55% and 60%. Stochastic gradient boosting accuracy is a few percentage points less than that of random forests for forecast horizons over 10 days. For those looking to forecast the direction of gold and silver prices, tree bagging and random forests offer an attractive combination of accuracy and ease of estimation. For each of gold and silver, a portfolio based on the random forests price direction forecasts outperformed a buy and hold portfolio.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".