I am using neural networks for time series prediction and am completely new to the process. I have 6 covariates in total. Since I am doing time series prediction, I have decided to use several lags of each variable while also including lags of my dependent variable. In total, I have a data frame with 49 possible variables to use.
I literally do not have the time to go through every combination of possible variables and parameters of the network so I have decided on some feature selection processes. I have two questions.
First, if I suspect the underlying data generating process of my dependent variable to be non-linear, does using feature selection methods that are linear, like PCA, hinder the ultimate outcome?
Second, is it appropriate to use non-neural network feature selection methods to find features to then use in the final neural network?
Thanks in advance for any advice/answers!