UNILEVER STOCK PRICES FORECASTING WITH ENSEMBLE AVERAGING APPROACH ARIMA-GARCH AND SUPPORT VECTOR REGRESSION

Investment, mainly in stock prices, plays a significant role in the Indonesian economy. Accurate stock price forecasting can help investors make informed decisions. Unilever Indonesia Tbk (UNVR) exhibits high volatility in its closing stock prices, making it crucial to develop a reliable forecasting model. This study applies an ensemble averaging method that integrates the ARIMA-GARCH model and Support Vector Regression (SVR) to predict UNVR's closing stock prices from January 6, 2019, to November 5, 2023. The results indicate that the data can be modeled using ARIMA (0,2,1). However, the squared residuals of the model show heteroscedasticity, necessitating variance modeling using the ARCH-GARCH approach. The best combination of mean and variance modeling is achieved with ARIMA (0,2,1) – GARCH (1,1), yielding a Mean Absolute Percentage Error (MAPE) of 2.865%. Additionally, a nonparametric SVR model with parameters C = 4 and ε = 0 is applied, resulting in a MAPE of 2.94%. An ensemble averaging approach is implemented to optimize forecasting accuracy further, combining ARIMA-GARCH and SVR models. This ensemble approach improves predictive performance, achieving a final MAPE of 1.682%. These findings demonstrate that ensemble averaging effectively enhances stock price forecasting accuracy by leveraging linear and nonlinear modeling techniques.