arXiv Machine Learning

The Virtue of Sparsity in Complexity

The paper investigates the trade‑off between sparsity and complexity in high‑dimensional asset pricing models. By separating capacity sparsity (restrictions on effective model capacity) from factor sparsity (parsimonious structure of priced risks), the authors use nonlinear feature expansions, basis pursuit, column generation, and GPU acceleration to estimate models with up to 432 million candidate factors. Their empirical results show that while sparse portfolios underperform dense ridgeless benchmarks at lower complexity, they achieve higher Sharpe ratios and lower pricing errors when the candidate set is large, indicating that capacity expansion and factor sparsity can complement each other.

arXiv Machine Learning
Jun 30

Large and Deep Factor Models

arXiv:2402. 06635v3 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: We show that a deep neural network (DNN) trained to construct a stochastic discount factor (SDF) admits an additive decomposition separating nonlinear characteristic discovery from the pricing rule that aggregates them.

By Bryan Kelly, Boris Kuznetsov, Semyon Malamud, Yuan Zhang
arXiv Machine Learning
Jul 7

Efficient Cross-Validation for Sparse Linear Regression

arXiv:2306. 14851v5 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Given a high-dimensional covariate matrix and a response vector, ridge-regularized sparse linear regression selects a subset of features that explains the relationship between covariates and the response in an interpretable manner.

By Ryan Cory-Wright, Andr\'es G\'omez
arXiv Machine Learning
Jul 2

Decision-focused Sparse Tangent Portfolio Optimization

arXiv:2607. 00581v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Sparse tangent portfolio optimization aims to learn an interpretable, low-cardinality portfolio in the tangency direction of the mean-variance frontier.

By Haeun Jeon, Seunghoon Choi, Hyunglip Bae, Yongjae Lee, Woo Chang Kim
arXiv Machine Learning
Sep 11

Sparsity Regularized and Robust Mean Variance Portfolio Selection Under Ellipsoidal Uncertainty

The paper studies mean‑variance portfolio selection with an β0 penalty to encourage sparse asset allocations. It incorporates uncertainty in the mean return vector via an ellipsoidal uncertainty set, leading to a robust sparse optimization framework. The authors analyze the structure of local and global minimizers, develop a branch‑and‑bound algorithm with a novel pruning rule, and show through computational experiments that their method is effective and competitive with existing solvers.

By Deniz Akkaya, Emre Can Yayla, Buse \c{S}en, Mustafa \c{C}. P{\i}nar
arXiv Machine Learning
Sep 10

High-dimensional Linear Bandits with Knapsacks

The paper studies high‑dimensional linear contextual bandits with knapsack constraints (CBwK), aiming to exploit sparsity for tighter regret bounds. It introduces an online hard‑thresholding estimator integrated into a primal‑dual framework, achieving sub‑linear regret that grows only logarithmically with the feature dimension. Under either a diverse‑covariate or margin condition, the regret improves to τ‑dependent rates, and when both hold simultaneously, a dual resolving scheme yields an even tighter bound. The approach also recovers optimal rates for high‑dimensional contextual bandits without knapsacks, and experiments demonstrate its practical effectiveness.

By Wanteng Ma, Dong Xia, Jiashuo Jiang
arXiv Machine Learning
Aug 26

(Mis)Understanding Benign Overfitting in Equity Return Prediction

The paper examines whether benign overfitting—where highly overparameterized models still predict well—occurs in equity return prediction. It finds a double‑descent risk curve for ridgeless models and shows that while ridge regularization slightly improves performance, the advantage vanishes at high parameter‑to‑observation ratios. Ultimately, both models fail to beat a simple historical average, indicating that standard equity predictors lack genuine forecasting power even with flexible machine learning methods.

By Hui Guo, Jiawei Huang, Runze Li, Yan Yu
Hugging Face Trending Papers
Sep 10

Sparsity Regularized and Robust Mean Variance Portfolio Selection Under Ellipsoidal Uncertainty

The paper studies mean‑variance portfolio selection using an β0 penalty to encourage sparse asset allocations. It incorporates uncertainty in expected returns via an ellipsoidal set, leading to a robust sparse optimization framework. The authors analyze local and global minimizers, design a branch‑and‑bound algorithm with a novel pruning rule, and show through computational experiments that their method outperforms a mixed‑integer second‑order cone programming solver on real market data.