Cognitive Alpha Mining via LLM-Driven Code-Based Evolution

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Liu, Fengyuan, Huang, Yi, Luo, Sichun, Wang, Yuqi, Yang, Yazheng, Li, Xinye, Hu, Zefa, Feng, Junlan, Liu, Qi
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Liu, Fengyuan
Huang, Yi
Luo, Sichun
Wang, Yuqi
Yang, Yazheng
Li, Xinye
Hu, Zefa
Feng, Junlan
Liu, Qi
author_facet Liu, Fengyuan
Huang, Yi
Luo, Sichun
Wang, Yuqi
Yang, Yazheng
Li, Xinye
Hu, Zefa
Feng, Junlan
Liu, Qi
contents Discovering effective predictive signals, or "alphas," from financial data with high dimensionality and extremely low signal-to-noise ratio remains a difficult open problem. Despite progress in deep learning, genetic programming, and, more recently, large language model (LLM)-based factor generation, existing approaches still explore only a narrow region of the vast alpha search space. Neural models tend to produce opaque and fragile patterns, while symbolic or formula-based methods often yield redundant or economically ungrounded expressions that generalize poorly. Although different in form, these paradigms share a key limitation: none can conduct broad, structured, and human-like exploration that balances logical consistency with creative leaps. To address this gap, we introduce the Cognitive Alpha Mining Framework (CogAlpha), which combines code-level alpha representation with LLM-driven reasoning and evolutionary search. Treating LLMs as adaptive cognitive agents, our framework iteratively refines, mutates, and recombines alpha candidates through multi-stage prompts and financial feedback. This synergistic design enables deeper thinking, richer structural diversity, and economically interpretable alpha discovery, while greatly expanding the effective search space. Experiments on 5 stock datasets from 3 stock markets demonstrate that CogAlpha consistently discovers alphas with superior predictive accuracy, robustness, and generalization over existing methods. Our results highlight the promise of aligning evolutionary optimization with LLM-based reasoning for automated and explainable alpha discovery.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2511_18850
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Cognitive Alpha Mining via LLM-Driven Code-Based Evolution
Liu, Fengyuan
Huang, Yi
Luo, Sichun
Wang, Yuqi
Yang, Yazheng
Li, Xinye
Hu, Zefa
Feng, Junlan
Liu, Qi
Computation and Language
Discovering effective predictive signals, or "alphas," from financial data with high dimensionality and extremely low signal-to-noise ratio remains a difficult open problem. Despite progress in deep learning, genetic programming, and, more recently, large language model (LLM)-based factor generation, existing approaches still explore only a narrow region of the vast alpha search space. Neural models tend to produce opaque and fragile patterns, while symbolic or formula-based methods often yield redundant or economically ungrounded expressions that generalize poorly. Although different in form, these paradigms share a key limitation: none can conduct broad, structured, and human-like exploration that balances logical consistency with creative leaps. To address this gap, we introduce the Cognitive Alpha Mining Framework (CogAlpha), which combines code-level alpha representation with LLM-driven reasoning and evolutionary search. Treating LLMs as adaptive cognitive agents, our framework iteratively refines, mutates, and recombines alpha candidates through multi-stage prompts and financial feedback. This synergistic design enables deeper thinking, richer structural diversity, and economically interpretable alpha discovery, while greatly expanding the effective search space. Experiments on 5 stock datasets from 3 stock markets demonstrate that CogAlpha consistently discovers alphas with superior predictive accuracy, robustness, and generalization over existing methods. Our results highlight the promise of aligning evolutionary optimization with LLM-based reasoning for automated and explainable alpha discovery.
title Cognitive Alpha Mining via LLM-Driven Code-Based Evolution
topic Computation and Language
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.18850