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Main Authors: Xu, Songci, Cheng, Qiangqiang, Lee, Chi-Guhn
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.20987
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author Xu, Songci
Cheng, Qiangqiang
Lee, Chi-Guhn
author_facet Xu, Songci
Cheng, Qiangqiang
Lee, Chi-Guhn
contents In the realm of stock prediction, machine learning models encounter considerable obstacles due to the inherent low signal-to-noise ratio and the nonstationary nature of financial markets. These challenges often result in spurious correlations and unstable predictive relationships, leading to poor performance of models when applied to out-of-sample (OOS) domains. To address these issues, we investigate \textit{Domain Generalization} techniques, with a particular focus on causal representation learning to improve a prediction model's generalizability to OOS domains. By leveraging multi-factor models from econometrics, we introduce a novel error bound that explicitly incorporates causal relationships. In addition, we present the connection between the proposed error bound and market nonstationarity. We also develop a \textit{Causal Discovery} technique to discover invariant feature representations, which effectively mitigates the proposed error bound, and the influence of spurious correlations on causal discovery is rigorously examined. Our theoretical findings are substantiated by numerical results, showcasing the effectiveness of our approach in enhancing the generalizability of stock prediction models.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2503_20987
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle A Causal Perspective of Stock Prediction Models
Xu, Songci
Cheng, Qiangqiang
Lee, Chi-Guhn
Portfolio Management
In the realm of stock prediction, machine learning models encounter considerable obstacles due to the inherent low signal-to-noise ratio and the nonstationary nature of financial markets. These challenges often result in spurious correlations and unstable predictive relationships, leading to poor performance of models when applied to out-of-sample (OOS) domains. To address these issues, we investigate \textit{Domain Generalization} techniques, with a particular focus on causal representation learning to improve a prediction model's generalizability to OOS domains. By leveraging multi-factor models from econometrics, we introduce a novel error bound that explicitly incorporates causal relationships. In addition, we present the connection between the proposed error bound and market nonstationarity. We also develop a \textit{Causal Discovery} technique to discover invariant feature representations, which effectively mitigates the proposed error bound, and the influence of spurious correlations on causal discovery is rigorously examined. Our theoretical findings are substantiated by numerical results, showcasing the effectiveness of our approach in enhancing the generalizability of stock prediction models.
title A Causal Perspective of Stock Prediction Models
topic Portfolio Management
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.20987