Relevance
10/10
Directly addresses the core quantitative trading problem of factor/alpha discovery. Proposes a complete agentic pipeline from hypothesis generation through statistical validation to portfolio construction. Introduces novel evaluation methodology (backtesting the discovery system via rolling re-execution) that is critical for any deployed quant research system. Benchmarks against five existing factor-mining systems on two comprehensive US equity panels. The multi-axis evaluation standard (productivity, performance, novelty, spanning) is directly applicable to evaluating any quant research process.
Implementation Complexity
9/10
Multi-agent system with 6 LLM-prompted roles (Planner, Proposer, Implementation Agent, Alignment Checker, Self-Evolve, Reflector), 9-stage sequential validation gate, 7-rule AST firewall, 3-tier persistent memory, rolling re-execution protocol with independent repropose/refit cadences, sandboxed execution, and Ridge combinator. Requires careful prompt engineering per role, deterministic gate ordering, and coordination of concurrent candidate dispatch. The rolling protocol adds significant complexity over static backtesting.
Reproducibility
4/5
Code promised upon acceptance. All gate thresholds fixed ex-ante and never adjusted post-run. Validation engine is a pure function of candidate series, in-sample window, and threshold dictionary. Deterministic firewall and statistical checks; only LLM roles are stochastic. Per-role temperatures documented. Shared scoring code across all systems. 5 static replicates, 3 rolling replicates. Full pseudocode (Algorithm 1) and threshold tables provided.