Regime switching forecasting for cryptocurrencies

Abstract There are many ways to model complex time series. The simplest approach is to increase the complexity, and thus, the flexibility of the model, for the entire time series. As an example, one could use a neural network. Another solution would be to change the parameters of a model dependent on the “state” or “regime” of the time series. A typical example here would be the Hidden Markov model (HMM). This paper combines the two concepts to create a Reinforcement Learning (RL) model that adds variables that depend on the state of the time series. To test the concept, the RL model is used with cryptocurrency data to determine the share to invest into the cryptocurrency index CRIX in order to maximize wealth. The results have shown that cryptocurrency metadata is useful as supplementary data for analysis of the respective prices. The Reinforcement learning model with regimes shows potential for investment management, but comes with some caveats.