Take ML course on coursera. It is a good introductery into ML algorithms which will tell you what ML could do\some general approaches:
https://www.coursera.org/course/ml
Also to get a broader picture I suggest coursera’s DataSciense course:
https://www.coursera.org/course/datasci
Finally a good book is Mahout in action – it is more about solving practical matters with mahout and has lots of examples and case-studies.
I beleive after that you will have a better understanding of what you want to do next.
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solved Machine Learning on financial big data [closed]