Can Large Language Models Mine Interpretable Financial Factors More Effectively? A Neural-Symbolic Factor Mining Agent Model

Zhiwei Li, Ran Song, Caihong Sun, Wei Xu, Zhengtao Yu, Ji-Rong Wen


Abstract
Finding interpretable factors for stock returns is the most vital issue in the empirical asset pricing domain. As data-driven methods, existing factor mining models can be categorized into symbol-based and neural-based models. Symbol-based models are interpretable but inefficient, while neural-based approaches are efficient but lack interpretability. Hence, mining interpretable factors effectively presents a significant challenge. Inspired by the success of Large Language Models (LLMs) in various tasks, we propose a FActor Mining Agent (FAMA) model that enables LLMs to integrate the strengths of both neural and symbolic models for factor mining. In this paper, FAMA consists of two main components: Cross-Sample Selection (CSS) and Chain-of-Experience (CoE). CSS addresses the homogeneity challenges in LLMs during factor mining by assimilating diverse factors as in-context samples, whereas CoE enables LLMs to leverage past successful mining experiences, expediting the mining of effective factors. Experimental evaluations on real-world stock market data demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach by surpassing the SOTA RankIC by 0.006 and RankICIR by 0.105 in predicting S&P 500 returns. Furthermore, the investment simulation shows that our model can achieve superior performance with an annualized return of 38.4% and a Sharpe ratio of 667.2%.
Anthology ID:
2024.findings-acl.233
Volume:
Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics ACL 2024
Month:
August
Year:
2024
Address:
Bangkok, Thailand and virtual meeting
Editors:
Lun-Wei Ku, Andre Martins, Vivek Srikumar
Venue:
Findings
SIG:
Publisher:
Association for Computational Linguistics
Note:
Pages:
3891–3902
Language:
URL:
https://aclanthology.org/2024.findings-acl.233
DOI:
Bibkey:
Cite (ACL):
Zhiwei Li, Ran Song, Caihong Sun, Wei Xu, Zhengtao Yu, and Ji-Rong Wen. 2024. Can Large Language Models Mine Interpretable Financial Factors More Effectively? A Neural-Symbolic Factor Mining Agent Model. In Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics ACL 2024, pages 3891–3902, Bangkok, Thailand and virtual meeting. Association for Computational Linguistics.
Cite (Informal):
Can Large Language Models Mine Interpretable Financial Factors More Effectively? A Neural-Symbolic Factor Mining Agent Model (Li et al., Findings 2024)
Copy Citation:
PDF:
https://aclanthology.org/2024.findings-acl.233.pdf