Interaction between financial risk measures and machine learning methods

The purpose of this article is to review the similarity and difference between financial risk minimization and a class of machine learning methods known as support vector machines, which were independently developed. By recognizing their common features, we can understand them in a unified mathematical framework. On the other hand, by recognizing their difference, we can develop new methods. In particular, employing the coherent measures of risk, we develop a generalized criterion for two-class classification. It includes existing criteria, such as the margin maximization and ν-SVM, as special cases. This extension can also be applied to the other type of machine learning methods such as multi-class classification, regression and outlier detection. Although the new criterion is first formulated as a nonconvex optimization, it results in a convex optimization by employing the nonnegative ℓ1-regularization. Numerical examples demonstrate how the developed methods work for bond rating. © 2013, Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.