China mainland new energy index price forecasting with the neural network

For policymakers and investors, forecasting prices of energy indices has always been an important task. The present work focuses on the Chinese market and explores the daily price forecasting problem for the new energy index in the mainland during the period spanning January 4, 2016 – December 31, 2020. Our analysis is facilitated through the nonlinear autoregressive neural network model and one hundred and twenty model settings are tested in the fields of the algorithm for training the model, the number of hidden neurons utilized, the number of delays utilized, and the ratio utilized for segmenting the price series into different phases. Analysis here leads to the construction of a rather simple model based upon four delays and two hidden neurons with the Levenberg-Marquardt algorithm for training, which generates accurate and stable forecast results, with relative root mean square errors below 1.80% and mean absolute percentage errors below 1.30% across training, validation, and testing phases and for the overall sample. This constructed model also leads to statistically significantly better forecasting performance than a linear autoregressive model at the 1% significance level based upon the modified Diebold-Mariano test. The model built could be used as part of policy analysis for policymakers and decision making for investors. The forecasting results might also benefit design of similar energy indices by offering reference information in terms of price paths projected through the model.