# Creating new targets for Signals

**URL:** <https://forum.numer.ai/t/creating-new-targets-for-signals/2582>\
**Category:** Signals\
**Created:** [March 29, 2021, 7:19am UTC](https://forum.numer.ai/t/creating-new-targets-for-signals/2582 "2021-03-29T07:19:07Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 5\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![rolanddeschain](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/9f8e36/32.png) [@rolanddeschain](https://forum.numer.ai/u/rolanddeschain)\
**Post date:** [March 29, 2021, 7:19am UTC](https://forum.numer.ai/t/creating-new-targets-for-signals/2582/1 "2021-03-29T07:19:07Z")

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Hi, I have a question about the Signals target.

Let’s say I have a perfect model to predict the stock returns for any given day, the perfect signal let’s say, so on friday\_date I should take the historical data and use the model to predict such returns/signal for which day in the future? is it the next Wednesday? or the one the next week, or is it the first Monday?

I ask because what I want to do is to build a custom target for my ML model, but my target would need to know somehow how far in the future is trying to predict (given the data on friday\_date)

Thanks for your time and happy numeraing 😉

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**Author:** ![jrai](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex009/user_avatar/forum.numer.ai/jrai/32/3291_2.png) [@jrai](https://forum.numer.ai/u/jrai)\
**Post date:** [March 29, 2021, 12:50pm UTC](https://forum.numer.ai/t/creating-new-targets-for-signals/2582/2 "2021-03-29T12:50:34Z")

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Assuming Friday’s price is t0, you probably want to create your target as (t6 - t2) / t2. This is the closest to the “4 day return with 2 day lag” that we can create ourselves.

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**Author:** ![autratec](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/6bbea6/32.png) [@autratec](https://forum.numer.ai/u/autratec)\
**Post date:** [June 20, 2021, 7:54am UTC](https://forum.numer.ai/t/creating-new-targets-for-signals/2582/3 "2021-06-20T07:54:04Z")

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General speaking, I feel the hedge fund behind signal tournament is running on weekly chart. So for us, we need to reduce our trading frequency from hour chart, 4hour, daily, to weekly.

And very interesting comments found in document section:

Numerai Signals is not about predicting stock returns, it is about finding original signals that Numerai doesn’t already have.

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**Author:** ![gammarat](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex009/user_avatar/forum.numer.ai/gammarat/32/3281_2.png) [@gammarat](https://forum.numer.ai/u/gammarat)\
**Post date:** [June 20, 2021, 1:10pm UTC](https://forum.numer.ai/t/creating-new-targets-for-signals/2582/4 "2021-06-20T13:10:53Z")

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> [@autratec](#):
>
> Numerai Signals is not about predicting stock returns, it is about finding original signals that Numerai doesn’t already have.

So they say. But if that is the case, what are they correlating your predictions against in order to determine a score?

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**Author:** ![autratec](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/6bbea6/32.png) [@autratec](https://forum.numer.ai/u/autratec)\
**Post date:** [June 20, 2021, 1:34pm UTC](https://forum.numer.ai/t/creating-new-targets-for-signals/2582/5 "2021-06-20T13:34:19Z")

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Couple thoughts and assumptions:

Hedge fund was evaluated by relative return, rather than absolute return.  
The traget is related to the relative return to the benchmark.  
The new signal provided by participate will be benchmarked, or correlated with the benchmark.  
No duplicated signal needed, that purpose to go through neutralisation process.  
Those signal/feature with strong correlation with benchmark with higher relative return, but unrelated with existing features will survive.