Dinara Zhorabek
Dinara Zhorabek
Data Analyst · Business Analyst
MS Applied Business Analytics · Boston University
Data Analysis · Python · Business Analytics · Artificial Intelligence (AI) · SQL

Inertia Trading – Boeing (BA) & S&P 500 (SPY)

Exploring short-term trading behavior in Boeing using rule-based strategies, machine learning, and clustering, benchmarked against the S&P 500.

📂 View Full Repository on GitHub

Overview

This project combines rule-based trading, supervised ML, and unsupervised clustering to analyze short-term stock behavior.

Components:

  1. Day Trading – Inertia Strategy
    Trades daily based on overnight price persistence.
  2. Weekly ML Strategy
    Classifies weeks as buy (green) or cash (red) using historical features.
  3. Clustering Analysis
    Identifies natural behavior regimes in Boeing and compares across Dow Jones stocks.

Day Trading – Inertia Strategy

Concept: Overnight price changes often persist during the next trading day.
Trades open at market open and close by day’s end with a fixed $100 per trade.

Strategy Logic

  • Positive Overnight Return → Long Position
    Open > Previous Close → Buy $100 at Open, sell at Close
    Profit/Loss per share = Close – Open

  • Negative Overnight Return → Short Position
    Open < Previous Close → Short $100 at Open, cover at Close
    Profit/Loss per share = Open – Close

Assumptions:
- Trade every day unless Open = Previous Close
- Ignore transaction costs

Key Findings

  • SPY (S&P 500 ETF) long trades most profitable above ~4% overnight return ($3 per trade)
  • Short positions profitable only at >3% thresholds, with modest gains
  • Overall, strategy works best on SPY long trades after moderate positive overnight moves

📓 View Notebook

Weekly Machine Learning Strategy

Concept: Scale the day trading idea to weekly predictions using ML.

Features

  • Mean Return (μ) – average weekly price change
  • Volatility (σ) – standard deviation of weekly returns

Labels

  • Green → Buy signal (stay invested)
  • Red → Sell signal (move to cash)

Train/Test Split

  • Training: 2023–2024
  • Testing: 2020–2022

Linear Classification Baseline

  • Vertical cutoff at μ = −100 separated green/red weeks in 2023
  • Applied to 2024 → 100% accuracy, $162.39 profit from $100 investment

📓 View Linear Classification Notebook


ML Models Evaluated

Model Accuracy Trading Profit (2024)
kNN 97.1% $252.42
Logistic Reg 95.2% $224.78
Decision Tree 100% $294.39
Random Forest 100% $294.39
Gaussian SVM 97.1% $245.92
Polynomial SVM 84.8% $91.50
Naïve Bayes 15.2% $100.00

Insights:
- Best performance: Decision Tree & Random Forest (profit + accuracy)
- kNN & Gaussian SVM → high accuracy, slightly lower profit
- Naïve Bayes struggled with correlated features
- Polynomial SVM overfits with high degree

Implementation Links:
- kNN & Logistic Regression
- Naïve Bayes & LDA/QDA
- Decision Tree & Random Forest
- SVM Models


Clustering Analysis

Goal: Discover natural regimes in weekly return–volatility patterns.

K-Means on Boeing (BA)

  • Features: weekly μ, σ
  • Optimal clusters: k = 4
  • Clusters show clear separation of green/red weeks → behavioral regimes
  • Cluster purity confirms weekly patterns align with ML predictions

📓 View Boeing Clustering Notebook

Clustering Across Dow Jones Stocks

  • Stocks: AMZN, JNJ, MCD, NKE, NVDA
  • Tracked cluster trajectories month-to-month
  • Hamming Distance Analysis:
    • Most different → NVDA vs. JNJ (distance = 50)
    • Most similar → MCD vs. NKE (distance = 28)
    • Most stable → MCD & NKE
    • Least stable → NVDA

📓 View Dow Jones Clustering Notebook


Key Learnings & Impact

  • Applied rule-based, supervised, and unsupervised learning to real-market stock data
  • Evaluated multiple ML models for predictive accuracy and trading profit
  • Discovered stable behavioral regimes across Boeing and Dow Jones components
  • Learned practical challenges: feature correlation, model overfitting, hyperparameter tuning