Patent ID: 7194434

Claim:
A method of forecasting an occurrence of an event for a market variable, comprising the steps of: (a) calculating a differential series from a series of terms of a financial parameter, said financial parameter series and said differential series each having successive-in-time terms, each term having one of a negative sign, a positive sign and a zero value; (b) locating term trends in said differential series to identify upward trends of terms having a positive sign, downward trends of terms having a negative sign, and unchanged trends of terms having a zero value; (c) calculating cumulative differentials of said located term trends to yield a cumulative differential series having successive-in-time terms; (d) identifying a series of sign state progressions from said cumulative differential series to yield a sign state progression series; (e) identifying a time position for a select term of the financial parameter series and identifying, for said time position, a corresponding term from each of said differential series, said cumulative differential series, and said sign state progression series; and (f) locating, for a time prior to the time position of said select terms of said financial parameter series term, terms in the financial parameter series, the differential series, the cumulative differential series and the sign state progression series that satisfy predetermined criteria related to said terms identified in step (e) and utilizing said located terms from this step (f) to define a probability for forecasting an occurrence of an event for the market variable.