MSATE-Net: A Multi-Scale Attention-Enhanced Bidirectional Temporal Network for Stock Index Forecasting

This study proposes MSATE-Net for next-day stock index forecasting. The model combines parallel one-dimensional convolutions with receptive fields of 3, 7, and 15 trading days, a bidirectional LSTM operating entirely inside a historical lookback window, sample-dependent temporal attention, and a residual regularized prediction head. Here, “bidirectional” denotes paired processing of the same observed window; it does not assert time-reversal invariance of financial prices or access to observations after the forecast origin. The globally learned attention temperature controls overall selectivity and is not described as a regime-specific adaptive parameter. Experiments use S&P 500, CSI 300, and Nikkei 225 data; persistence and drift benchmarks; recent forecasting architectures; five-seed uncertainty estimates; expanding-window tests; return and directional metrics; and Diebold–Mariano comparisons. The revised evidence supports lower price-level errors, while directional and significance results are mixed across markets. Because a separate model is fitted in each market, the findings establish cross-market consistency rather than transfer learning.