The foreign exchange market is one of the most complex dynamic markets
with the characteristics of high volatility, nonlinearity and
irregularity. Since the Bretton Woods System collapsed in 1970s, the
fluctuations in the foreign exchange market are more volatile than ever.
Furthermore, some important factors, such as economic growth, trade
development, interest rates and inflation rates, have significant
impacts on the exchange rate fluctuation. Meantime, these
characteristics also make it extremely difficult to predict foreign
exchange rates. Therefore, exchange rates forecasting has become a very
important and challenge research issue for both academic and ind- trial
communities. In this monograph, the authors try to apply artificial
neural networks (ANNs) to exchange rates forecasting. Selection of the
ANN approach for - change rates forecasting is because of ANNs' unique
features and powerful pattern recognition capability. Unlike most of the
traditional model-based forecasting techniques, ANNs are a class of
data-driven, self-adaptive, and nonlinear methods that do not require
specific assumptions on the und- lying data generating process. These
features are particularly appealing for practical forecasting situations
where data are abundant or easily available, even though the theoretical
model or the underlying relationship is - known. Furthermore, ANNs have
been successfully applied to a wide range of forecasting problems in
almost all areas of business, industry and engineering. In addition,
ANNs have been proved to be a universal fu- tional approximator that can
capture any type of complex relationships.