AI/ML in Finance: How a Lightweight Neural Network Forecasts NVDA’s Next Stock Price Move

Can AI really predict tomorrow’s stock price?
In this hands-on case study, I put a lightweight neural network to the test using none other than NVDA, the tech titan at the heart of the AI revolution. With just five core inputs and zero fluff, this model analyzes years of stock data to forecast next-day prices — delivering insights that are surprisingly sharp, sometimes eerily accurate, and always thought-provoking. If you’re curious about how machine learning can be used to navigate market uncertainty, this article is for you.

Are humans naturally drawn to those who claim to foresee the future?

Astrology, palmistry, crystal balls, clairvoyants, and mystics — all have long fascinated us with their promise of prediction. Today, Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning (AI/ML) seem to be the modern-day soothsayers, offering insights not through intuition, but through data and mathematics.

With that playful thought in mind, I asked myself: How well can a lightweight neural network forecast tomorrow’s stock price? In this article, I build a simple, no-frills model to predict NVDA’s next-day price — using only essential features and avoiding any complex manipulations

I’ve been fascinated by the challenge of predicting NVDA’s stock price for the next day. For one, it’s an incredibly volatile stock — its price can swing wildly, almost as if someone sneezed down the hallway! What’s more impressive is that in November 2024, NVIDIA briefly became the most valuable company in the world, reaching a peak market cap of $3.4 trillion.

NVDA has captured the imagination of those driving the AI revolution, largely because its GPU chips are the backbone of modern AI/ML models. So, testing my neural network on NVDA’s price movement felt like a fitting experiment — whether the model forecasts accurately or not.

My neural network model takes in just 5 features per data point — the stock’s end-of-day Open, High, Low, Close, and Volume — to predict tomorrow’s Close price.

For training, I used NVDA’s stock data from January 1, 2020, to December 31, 2024 — a five-year period that includes 1,258 trading days. The target variable is the known next day’s Close price. The core idea was simple: Given today’s stock metrics for NVDA, can we predict tomorrow’s Close price?

The basic architecture of the neural network is a schema I’ve used many times before, and I’ve shared it here for clarity.

After training, the model learns all its weights and biases, totaling 2,497 parameters. It’s always a good idea to validate predictions made by a newly developed model — by running it on the training data and comparing the results with actual historical data. The graph below illustrates this comparison. The linear regression fit between the actual and predicted Close prices is excellent (R² = 0.9978). MAPE refers to the Mean Absolute Percentage Error, while SAPE is the Standard Deviation of the Percentage Error.

The trained model is now ready to predict NVDA’s closing price for the next trading day, based on today’s end-of-day data. I ran the model for every trading day in 2025, up to the date of writing this article: April 9, 2025 (using the known Close from April 8, 2025). The linear relationship between the actual and predicted Close prices for this period is shown in the following chart.

The correlation is reasonably strong (R² = 0.8173), though not as high as the model’s performance on the training set. On some days, the predictions are very accurate; on others, there are significant deviations. You’ll appreciate this better by examining the results in numerical and tabular form. The table below is a screenshot from the live implementation of the model, which you can run and explore on the Hugging Face Spaces platform. Update – please see a refined implementation at MLPowersAI, where you can see next day predictions for 5 stocks (AAPL, GOOGL, MSFT, NVDA, and TSLA).

The wild swings in closing prices — as reflected by large percentage errors — are mostly driven by market sentiment, which the model does not account for. For example, on April 3 and 4, 2025, the prediction errors were influenced by unexpected trade tariffs announced by the U.S. Government, which triggered strong market reactions.

Even though the percentage error swings wildly in 2025, we can still derive valuable insights from this lightweight neural network model by considering the MAPE bounds. For example, on March 28, 2025, the actual Close was $109.67, while the predicted Close was $113.11, resulting in a -3.14% error. However, based on all 2025 predictions to date, we know that the Mean Absolute Percentage Error (MAPE) is 3.25%. Using this as a guide for lower and upper bounds, the predicted Close range spans from $109.47 to $116.76.

We observe that the actual Close falls within these bounds. I strongly recommend reviewing the current table from the live implementation to make your own observations and draw conclusions.

I was also curious to examine the distribution of the percentage error — specifically, whether it follows a normal distribution. The Shapiro-Wilk test (p-value = 0.0000) suggests that the distribution is not normal, while the Kolmogorov-Smirnov (K-S) test (p-value = 0.2716) suggests that it may be approximately normal. The data also exhibits left skewness and is leptokurtic. The histogram and Q-Q plot of the percentage error are shared below.

Another way to visualize the variation between the actual and predicted Close prices in 2025 is by examining the time series price plot, shown below.

Closing Thoughts …

Technical traders rely heavily on chart-based tools to guide their trades — support and resistance levels, moving averages, exponential trends, momentum indicators like RSI and MACD, and hundreds of other technical metrics. While these tools help in identifying trading opportunities at specific points in time, they don’t predict where a stock will close at the end of the trading day. In that sense, their estimates may be no better than the guess of a novice trader.

The average U.S. investor isn’t necessarily a technical day trader or an institutional analyst. And no matter how experienced a trader is, everyone is blind to the net market sentiment of the day. As the saying goes, the market discounts everything — it reacts to macroeconomic shifts, news cycles, political developments, and human emotion. Capturing all that in a forecast is close to impossible.

That’s where neural network-based machine learning models step in. By training on historical data, these models take a more mathematical and algorithmic approach — offering a glimpse into what might lie ahead. While not perfect, they represent a step in the right direction. My own lightweight model, though simple, performs remarkably well on most days. When it doesn’t, it signals that the model likely needs more input features.

To improve predictive power, we can expand the feature set beyond the five core inputs (Open, High, Low, Close, Volume). Additions like percentage return, moving averages (SMA/EMA), rolling volume, RSI, MACD, and others can enhance the model’s ability to interpret market behavior more effectively.

What excites me most is the democratization of this technology. Models like this one can help level the playing field between everyday investors and institutional giants. I foresee a future where companies emerge to build accessible, intelligent trading tools for the average person — tools that were once reserved for Wall Street.

I invite you to explore and follow the live implementation of this model. Observe how its predictions play out in real time. My personal belief is that neural networks hold immense potential in stock prediction — and we’re only just getting started.

Update (May 2025):
Since publishing this article, I have deployed a more advanced neural network model that forecasts next-day closing prices for five major stocks (AAPL, GOOGL, MSFT, NVDA, TSLA). The model runs daily and is hosted on a custom FastAPI and NGINX platform at MLPowersAI Stock Prediction.

Disclaimer

The information provided in this article and through the linked prediction model is for educational and informational purposes only. It does not constitute financial, investment, or trading advice, and should not be relied upon as such.

Any decisions made based on the model’s output are solely at the user’s own risk. I make no guarantees regarding the accuracy, completeness, or reliability of the predictions. I am not responsible for any financial losses or gains resulting from the use of this model.

Always consult with a licensed financial advisor before making any investment decisions.

Bringing Historical Process Data to Life: Unlocking AI’s Goldmine with Neural Networks for Smarter Manufacturing

In every factory, industrial operation, and chemical plant, vast amounts of process data are continuously recorded. Yet most of it remains unused, buried in digital archives. What if we could bring this hidden goldmine to life and transform it into a powerful tool for process optimization, cost reduction, and predictive decision-making? AI and machine learning (ML) are revolutionizing industries by turning raw data into actionable insights. From predicting product quality in real-time to optimizing chemical reactions, AI-driven process modeling is not just the future. It is ready to be implemented today.

In this article, I will explore how historical process data can be extracted, neural networks can be trained, and AI models can be deployed to provide instant and accurate predictions. These technologies will help industries operate smarter, faster, and more efficiently than ever before.

How many years of industrial process data are sitting idle on your company’s servers? It’s time to unleash it—because, with AI, it’s a goldmine.

I personally know of billion-dollar companies that have decades of process data collecting dust. Manufacturing firms have been diligently logging process data through automated DCS (Distributed Control Systems) and PLC (Programmable Logic Controller) systems at millisecond intervals—or even smaller—since the 1980s. With advancements in chip technology, data collection has only become more efficient and cost-effective. Leading automation companies such as Siemens (Simatic PCS 7), Yokogawa (Centum VP), ABB (800xA), Honeywell (Experion), Rockwell Automation (PlantPAx), Schneider Electric (Foxboro), and Emerson (Delta V) have been at the forefront of industrial data and process automation. As a result, massive repositories of historical process data exist within organizations—untapped and underutilized.

Every manufacturing process involves inputs (raw materials and energy) and outputs (products). During processing, variables such as temperature, pressure, motor speeds, energy consumption, byproducts, and chemical properties are continuously logged. Final product metrics—such as yield and purity—are checked for quality control, generating additional data. Depending on the complexity of the process, these parameters can range from just a handful to hundreds or even thousands.

A simple analogy: consider the manufacturing of canned soup. Process variables might include ingredient weights, chunk size distribution, flavoring amounts, cooking temperature and pressure profiles, stirring speed, moisture loss, and can-filling rates. The outputs could be both numerical (batch weight, yield, calories per serving) and categorical (taste quality, consistency ratings). This pattern repeats across industries—whether in chemical plants, refineries, semiconductor manufacturing, pharmaceuticals, food processing, polymers, cosmetics, power generation, or electronics—every operation has a wealth of process data waiting to be explored.

For companies, revenue is driven by product sales. Those that consistently produce high-quality products thrive in the marketplace. Profitability improves when sales increase and when cost of goods sold (COGS) and operational inefficiencies are reduced. Process data can be leveraged to minimize product rejects, optimize yield, and enhance quality—directly impacting the bottom line.

How can AI help?

The answer is simple: AI can process vast amounts of historical data and predict product quality and performance based on input parameters—instantly and with remarkable accuracy.

A Real-Life Manufacturing Scenario

Imagine you’re the VP of Manufacturing at a pharmaceutical company that produces a critical cancer drug—a major revenue driver. You’ve been producing this drug for seven years, ensuring a steady supply to patients worldwide.

Today, a new batch has just finished production. It will take a week for quality testing before final approval. However, a power disruption occurred during the run, requiring process adjustments and minor parts replacements. The process was completed as planned, and all critical data was logged. Now, you wait. If the batch fails quality control a week later, it must be discarded, setting you back another 40 days due to production and scheduling delays.

Wouldn’t it be invaluable if you could predict, on the same day, whether the batch would pass or fail? AI can make this possible. By training machine learning models on historical process data and batch outcomes, we can build predictive systems that offer near-instantaneous quality assessments—saving time, money, and resources.

Case Study: CSTR Surrogate AI/ML Model

To illustrate this concept, let’s consider a Continuous Stirred Tank Reactor (CSTR).

The system consists of a feed stream (A) entering a reactor, where it undergoes an irreversible chemical transformation to product (B), and both the unreacted feed (A) and product (B) exit the reactor.

$A \rightarrow B$

The process inputs are the feed flow rate F (L/min), concentration CA_in (mol/L), and temperature T_in (K, Kelvin).

The process outputs of interest are the exit stream temperature, T_ss (K) and the concentration of unreacted (A), CA_ss (K). Knowing CA_ss is equivalent to knowing the concentration of (B), since the two are related through a straight forward mass balance.

The residence time in the CSTR is designed such that the output has reached steady state conditions. The exit flow rate is the same as the input feed flow rate, since it is a continuous and not a batch reactor.

Generating Data for AI Training

To develop an AI/ML model we would need training data. We could do many experiments and gather the data, in lieu of historical data. However, this CSTR illustration was chosen, since we can generate the output parameters through simulation. Further, this problem has an analytical steady state solution, which can be used for further accuracy comparisons. The focus of this article is not to illustrate the mathematics behind this problem, and therefore, this delegated to a brief note at the end.

When historical data has not been collated from real industrial processes, or if it is unavailable, computer simulations can be run to estimate the output variables for specified input variables. There are more than 50 industrial strength process simulation packages in the market, and some of the popular ones are – Aspen Plus / Aspen HYSYS, CHEMCAD, gPROMS, DWSIM, COMSOL Multiphysics, ANSYS Fluent, ProSim, and Simulink (MATLAB).

Depending on the complexity of the process, the simulation software can take anywhere from minutes, to hours, or even days to generate a single simulation output. When time is a constraint, AI/ML models can serve as a powerful surrogate. Their prediction speeds are orders of magnitude faster than traditional simulation. The only caveat is that the quality of the training data must be good enough to represent the real world historical data closely.

As explained in the brief note in the CSTR Mathematical Model section below, this illustration has the advantage of generating very reliable outputs, for any given set of input conditions. For developing the training set, the input variables were varied in the following ranges.

CA_in = 0.5 – 2.0 mol/L

T_in = 300 – 350 K (27 – 77 C)

F = 5 – 20 L/min

Each of the training sets have these 3 input variables. 5000 random feature sets (X) were generated using a uniform distribution, and the 3D plot shows the variations.

For training the AI/ML model 80% of these feature sets were selected at random and used, while for testing 20% were used as the test set. The corresponding output variables, Y, (CA_ss, T_ss) were numerically calculated for each off the 5000 input feature sets, and were used for the respective training and testing.

ML Neural Network Model

The ML model consisted of a Neural Network (NN) with 2 hidden layers and one output layer as follows. The first hidden layer had 64 neurons and the second one had 32 neurons. The final output layer had 2 neurons. The ReLU activation was used for the hidden layers and a linear activation for the output layer. The loss function used was mean-squared-error.

The model was trained on the training set for 20 epochs and showed rapid convergence. The loss vs epochs is presented here. The final loss was near zero (~10^-6).

After training the NN model, the Test Set was run. It yielded a Test Loss of zero (rounded off to 4 decimal places) and a Test MAE (mean average error) of 0.0025. The model has performed very nicely on the Test Set.

AI/ML Model Inference

This is where AI/ML gets really exciting! I’ve packaged and deployed the neural network model on Hugging Face Spaces, using Gradio to create an interactive and web-accessible interface. Now, you can take it for a test drive—just plug in the input values, hit Submit, and watch the predictions roll in!

An actual output (screen shot) from a sample inference is shown here for input values which are within the range of the training and test sets. Both outputs (CA_ss and T_ss) are over 99% accurate.

However, this might not be all that surprising, considering the training set—comprising 4,000 feature sets (80% of 5,000)—covered a wide range of possibilities. Our result could simply be close to one of those existing data points. But what happens when we push the boundaries? My response to that would be to test a feature set where some values fall outside the training range.

For instance, in our dataset, the temperature varied between 300–350 K. What if we increase it by 10% beyond the upper limit, setting it at 385 K? Plugging this into the model, we still get an inference with over 99% accuracy! The predicted steady-state temperature (T_ss) is 385.35 K, compared to the analytical solution of 388.88 K, yielding an accuracy of 99.09%. A screenshot of the results is shared below.

Summary

I’m convinced that AI/ML has remarkable power to predict real-world scenarios with unmatched speed and accuracy. I hope this article has convinced you too. Within every company lies a hidden treasure trove of historical process data—an untapped goldmine waiting to be leveraged. When this data is extracted, cleaned, and harnessed to train a custom ML model, it transforms from an archive of past events into a powerful tool for the future.

The potential benefits are immense: vastly improved process efficiency, enhanced product quality, smarter process optimization, reduced downtime, better scheduling and planning, elimination of guesswork, and increased profitability. Incorporating ML into industrial processes requires effort—models must be carefully designed, trained, and deployed for real-time inference. While there may be cases where a single ML model can serve multiple organizations, we are still in the early stages of AI/ML adoption in process industries, and these scalable use cases are yet to be fully explored.

Right now, the opportunity is massive. The companies that act today—dusting off their historical data, building custom AI models, and integrating ML into their operations—will set the standard and lead their industries into the future. The question is: Will your company be among them?

CSTR Mathematical Model

Read this section only if you like math and want the details!

The mass and energy balance on the CSTR yield the following equations, which give the variation of concentration for the reacting species (A) and the fluid temperature (T) as a function of time (t).

$\frac{dC_A}{dt} = \frac{F}{V} (C_{A,\text{in}} - C_A) - k C_A$

$\frac{dT}{dt} = \frac{F}{V} (T_{\text{in}} - T) + \frac{-\Delta H}{\rho C_p} k C_A$

$C_A$ and $T$ are the exit concentration of A and fluid temperature $T$ . Since the residence time is long enough to reach steady state, for this irreversible reaction,

$C_A =$ CA_ss

$T =$ T_ss

The following model parameters have been taken to be a constant for all the simulated runs and analytical calculations. There is no requirement to have physical properties to be constant, since they could be allowed to vary with temperature. However, for this simulation they have been held constant.

$V =$ 100 L (tank volume)

${\Delta H} =$ -50,000 J/mol (heat of exothermic reaction)

${\rho} =$ 1 Kg/L (fluid density)

$C_p =$ 4184 J/Kg.K (fluid specific heat capacity)

The irreversible reaction for species (A) going to (B) is modeled as a first order rate equation, with the rate constant $k =$ 0.1 min^-1, and where $-r_A$ is the reaction rate (mol/L.min).

$-r_A = kC_A$

I have used a mix of SI and common units. However, when taken together in the equation, the combined units work consistently.

The analytical solution is easy to calculate and can be done by setting the time derivatives to zero and solving for the concentration and temperature. These are provided here for completeness.

CA_ss $= \frac{F C_{A,\text{in}} }{F + k V}$

T_ss = T_in – $\frac{\Delta H k C_A V}{\rho C_p F}$

To simulate the training set, we can calculate CA_ss and T_ss from the above equations. I have computed CA_ss and T_ss by solving the system of ordinary differential equations using scipy.integrate.solve_ivp, which is an adaptive-step solver in SciPy. The steady state values were taken as the dependent variable values after a lapse time of 50 minutes. These values would vary slightly from analytical values. But, they provide small variations, just like in real processes due to inherent fluctuations.