The study investigates whether adding inference-time reasoning to large language models (LLMs) improves trading performance. Using a controlled experiment across DeepSeek, GPT, and Gemini models, the authors varied reasoning effort while keeping other variables constant and evaluated over a full year of U.S. equities under three input conditions. Results show that additional reasoning does not reliably increase net portfolio returns and can even lead to nonmonotonic performance and unstable outcomes.
By Jiayi Chen, Guiling Wang
arXiv:2606. 00143v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Financial markets are inherently non-stationary, exhibiting frequent regime shifts and structural changes that render traditional Portfolio Management (PM) approaches ineffective.
By Chaofan Pan, Lingfei Ren, Linbo Xiong, Yonghao Li, Wei Wei, Xin Yang
FinPILOT is a plugin inference‑time policy optimization framework that enhances pretrained reinforcement‑learning trading agents by leveraging a multi‑step price forecaster to generate imagined market trajectories. At each decision point, it optimizes the pretrained policy using the forecaster’s predicted price path before executing a trade, without altering the original training pipeline. Across five pretrained policies and multiple market settings, FinPILOT consistently improves total return and Sharpe ratio, with gains increasing as forecast accuracy improves.
By Eun Go, Rohan Deb, Arindam Banerjee
arXiv:2608.28399v2 Announce Type: replace
Abstract: In financial markets, a sequential policy that reacts systematically to price movements may become predictable to other market participants. This p...
By Yupeng Zhang, Liuyuan Jiang, Hongyi Huang, Bingheng Li, Lisha Chen
Alpha‑R1 introduces a reinforcement‑learning aligned large language model framework that performs context‑aware alpha screening by semantically gating candidate factors against a dynamic market state description. The model, trained with group relative policy optimization using realized portfolio returns as reward, selects a sparse subset of factors whose economic rationale matches current market conditions. In a 12‑month out‑of‑sample test, Alpha‑R1 achieved annualized returns of 47.87% on the S&P 500 and 40.57% on the CSI 300, with Sharpe ratios of 1.62 and 2.23, demonstrating the effectiveness of semantic factor reranking in non‑stationary markets.
By Zuoyou Jiang, Li Zhao, Rui Sun, Ruohan Sun, Zhongjian Li, Jing Li, Daxin Jiang, Zuo Bai, Cheng Hua
arXiv:2608. 14014v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Two old market sayings hold that news is already priced in by the time it is published, and that the rumor is bought while the news is sold.
By Alireza Kargarzadeh, Nariman Khaledian, Navid Parvini, Sid Ghatak, Arman Khaledian
arXiv:2607. 20645v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: We introduce Frontier Financial Judgement, a challenging new benchmark developed in collaboration with professional equity analysts to assess agents' ability to replicate expert human judgements.
By Joshua Harris
arXiv:2609.23703v1 Announce Type: cross
Abstract: Financial language models can transform unstructured firm-specific news into structured decision signals, but financial AI research lacks an integrat...
By Kemal Kirtac
The paper addresses look‑ahead bias in large language models (LLMs) used for financial prediction, which arises because LLMs are trained on long time‑series data. It proposes a low‑cost solution that adjusts the logits of a base model at inference time using two smaller, specialized models—one fine‑tuned to forget certain information and another to retain it. Experiments show that this method removes both verbatim and semantic knowledge, corrects biases, and outperforms previous approaches.
By Humzah Merchant, Bradford Levy
arXiv:2608.22852v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: Large language models (LLMs) are increasingly used in investment decision-making, yet prior work shows that they exhibit systematic, model-specific inv...
By Sahong Park, Suhwan Park, Hoyoung Lee, Gakyung Kwon, Wonbin Ahn, Jaewon Choi, Alejandro Lopez-Lira, Yoon Kim, Chanyeol Choi, Hyeongwoo Kong, Yongjae Lee
EvolveTrade is a self‑evolving framework that treats the system prompt of a tool‑using LLM trading agent as a text‑parameterized policy. After each update interval, a Policy Agent revises this policy using accumulated decision traces and portfolio feedback while keeping the backbone LLM fixed, allowing the agent to refine its information‑acquisition and portfolio‑construction procedures over time. Experiments across multiple market regimes and two LLM backbones show that EvolveTrade often improves Sharpe Ratio and Cumulative Return over fixed‑policy baselines, with behavioral analyses indicating increased code‑mediated analysis and regime‑relevant computations.
By Sehee Kim, Yumin Choi, Minki Kang, Sung Ju Hwang
The study examines whether large language models (LLMs) can accurately simulate individual financial users by conducting a longitudinal paper‑trading experiment with 80 participants. Using a rolling next‑day prediction protocol, the researchers compared LLM predictions to a simple recent‑activity persistence baseline across multiple behavioral fidelity levels, from trade occurrence to asset selection and portfolio outcomes. Results show that no LLM consistently outperforms the baseline, with fidelity decreasing at finer behavioral granularity, and that recent trading history largely drives activity predictions while asset selection depends more on available evidence.
By Jiajie He, Jiangyuan Hong, Xintong Chen, Dongling Ni, Wenjin Liu