A fundamental objective of Artificial Intelligence (AI) is the creation of in telligent computer programs. In more modest terms AI is simply con cerned with expanding the repertoire of computer applications into new domains and to new levels of efficiency. The motivation for this effort comes from many sources. At a practical level there is always a demand for achieving things in more efficient ways. Equally, there is the technical challenge of building programs that allow a machine to do something a machine has never done before. Both of these desires are contained within AI and both provide the inspirational force behind its development. In terms of satisfying both of these desires there can be no better example than machine learning. Machines that can learn have an in-built effi ciency. The same software can be applied in many applications and in many circumstances. The machine can adapt its behaviour so as to meet the demands of new, or changing, environments without the need for costly re-programming. In addition, a machine that can learn can be ap plied in new domains with the genuine potential for innovation. In this sense a machine that can learn can be applied in areas where little is known about possible causal relationships, and even in circumstances where causal relationships are judged not to exist. This last aspect is of major significance when considering machine learning as applied to fi nancial forecasting.

As technology advancement has increased, so to have computational applications for forecasting, modelling and trading financial markets and information, and practitioners are finding ever more complex solutions to financial challenges. Neural networking is a highly effective, trainable algorithmic approach which emulates certain aspects of human brain functions, and is used extensively in financial forecasting allowing for quick investment decision making. This book presents the most cutting-edge artificial intelligence (AI)/neural networking applications for markets, assets and other areas of finance. Split into four sections, the book first explores time series analysis for forecasting and trading across a range of assets, including derivatives, exchange traded funds, debt and equity instruments. This section will focus on pattern recognition, market timing models, forecasting and trading of financial time series. Section II provides insights into macro and microeconomics and how AI techniques could be used to better understand and predict economic variables. Section III focuses on corporate finance and credit analysis providing an insight into corporate structures and credit, and establishing a relationship between financial statement analysis and the influence of various financial scenarios. Section IV focuses on portfolio management, exploring applications for portfolio theory, asset allocation and optimization. This book also provides some of the latest research in the field of artificial intelligence and finance, and provides in-depth analysis and highly applicable tools and techniques for practitioners and researchers in this field.

Intelligent Systems for Finance and Business Edited by Suran Goonatilake and Philip Treleaven A new generation of computing methods, commonly known as ‘intelligent systems’ are now beginning to be successfully applied in a variety of business and financial modelling tasks, and in many cases are outperforming traditional statistical techniques. Intelligent Systems for Finance and Business provides comprehensive coverage of the latest intelligent systems including genetic algorithms, neural networks, fuzzy logic, expert systems, rule induction, genetic programming, case based reasoning and intelligent hybrid systems. The authors clearly illustrate theories with practical case studies drawn from a wide variety of business sectors such as: • credit evaluation • direct marketing • insider dealing detection • insurance fraud detection • insurance claims processing • financial trading • portfolio management • economic modelling Written by leading professionals from the US, Europe and Asia who have developed intelligent systems to tackle some of the most challenging problems in finance and business, this book will be a valuable source of information for traders, analysts, researchers and computing personnel in investment banking, retailing, marketing, financial services, insurance and regulation.

In this present internet age, risk analysis and crisis response based on information will make up a digital world full of possibilities and improvements to people’s daily life and capabilities. These services will be supported by more intelligent systems and more effective decisionmaking. This book contains all the papers presented at the 4th International Conference on Risk Analysis and Crisis Response, August 27-29, 2013, Istanbul, Turkey. The theme was intelligent systems and decision making for risk analysis and crisis response. The risk issues in the papers cluster around the following topics: natural disasters, finance risks, food and feed safety, catastrophic accidents, critical infrastructure, global climate change, project management, supply chains, public health, threats to social safety, energy and environment. This volume will be of interest to all professionals and academics in the field of risk analysis, crisis response, intelligent systems and decision-making, as well as related fields of enquiry.

New approaches are needed that could move us towards developing effective systems for problem solving and decision making, systems that can deal with complex and ill-structured situations, systems that can function in information rich environments, systems that can cope with imprecise information, systems that can rely on their knowledge and learn from experience - i.e. intelligent systems. One of the main efforts in intelligent systems development is focused on knowledge and information management which is regarded as the crucial issue in smart decision making support. The 13 Chapters of this book represent a sample of such effort. The overall aim of this book is to provide guidelines to develop tools for smart processing of knowledge and information. Still, the guide does not presume to give ultimate answers. Rather, it poses ideas and case studies to explore and the complexities and challenges of modern knowledge management issues. It also encourages its reader to become aware of the multifaceted interdisciplinary character of such issues. The premise of this book is that its reader will leave it with a heightened ability to think - in different ways - about developing, evaluating, and supporting intelligent knowledge and information management systems in real life based environment.

Papers presented at the Forecasting Financial Markets in India, held at Kharagpur during 29-31 December 2008.

In this book, recent theoretical developments on fuzzy logic, neural networks and optimization algorithms, as well as their hybrid combinations, are presented. In addition, the above-mentioned methods are presented in application areas such as, intelligent control and robotics, pattern recognition, medical diagnosis, decision-making, time series prediction and optimization of complex problems. The book contains a collection of papers focused on hybrid intelligent systems based on soft computing techniques. There are a group of papers with the main theme of type-1 and type-2 fuzzy logic, which basically consists of papers that propose new concepts and algorithms based on type-1 and type-2 fuzzy logic and their applications. There also a group of papers that offer theoretical concepts and applications of meta-heuristics in different areas. Another group of papers outlines diverse applications of fuzzy logic, neural networks and hybrid intelligent systems in medical problems. There are also some papers that present theory and practice of neural networks in different application areas. In addition, there are papers that offer theory and practice of optimization and evolutionary algorithms in different application areas. Finally, there are a group of papers describing applications of fuzzy logic, neural networks and meta-heuristics in pattern recognition and classification problems.