Reinforcement learning promises to learn trading policies directly from market interaction rather than through the forecast-then-optimize pipeline. The papers here apply DQN, policy gradients, and actor-critic methods to portfolio allocation, optimal execution, market making, and hedging.
Read this literature with calibrated skepticism: markets are non-stationary, near-random-walk environments with weak reward signals — close to the hardest possible setting for RL. The papers that score well on rigor tend to share three habits: they train and test on strictly separated periods, they benchmark against simple baselines (buy-and-hold, equal-weight, TWAP) rather than only against other neural approaches, and they report sensitivity to transaction costs. A Sharpe ratio from an RL agent without those three checks is a screenshot, not a result. Where the field genuinely shines is execution and hedging — problems with dense feedback and clear cost structure.
Related hubs: Machine Learning for Forecasting, High-Frequency Trading & Execution, Portfolio Optimization.
Explainers from the corpus: Monte Carlo policy gradient (MCPG) in trading →
This paper presents a Quantum Reinforcement Learning (QRL) solution to the dynamic portfolio optimization problem based on Variational Quantum Circuits. The implemented QRL approaches are quantum analogues of the classical neural-network-based Deep Deterministic Policy Gradient and Deep Q-Network al
This paper investigates the deep hedging framework, based on reinforcement learning (RL), for the dynamic hedging of swaptions, contrasting its performance with traditional sensitivity-based rho-hedging. We design agents under three distinct objective functions (mean squared error, downside risk, an
The optimal control of sustainable energy supply systems, including renewable energies and energy storage, takes a central role in the decarbonization of industrial systems. However, the use of fluctuating renewable energies leads to fluctuations in energy generation and requires a suitable control
This paper contributes to the existing literature on hedging American options with Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL). The study first investigates hyperparameter impact on hedging performance, considering learning rates, training episodes, neural network architectures, training steps, and transactio
This article leverages deep reinforcement learning (DRL) to hedge American put options, utilizing the deep deterministic policy gradient (DDPG) method. The agents are first trained and tested with Geometric Brownian Motion (GBM) asset paths and demonstrate superior performance over traditional strat
In high-dimensional time-series analysis, it is essential to have a set of key factors (namely, the style factors) that explain the change of the observed variable. For example, volatility modeling in finance relies on a set of risk factors, and climate change studies in climatology rely on a set of
Predicting the Stock movement attracts much attention from both industry and academia. Despite such significant efforts, the results remain unsatisfactory due to the inherently complicated nature of the stock market driven by factors including supply and demand, the state of the economy, the politic
Pair trading is one of the most effective statistical arbitrage strategies which seeks a neutral profit by hedging a pair of selected assets. Existing methods generally decompose the task into two separate steps: pair selection and trading. However, the decoupling of two closely related subtasks can
In this paper, we discuss the Dutch power market, which is comprised of a day-ahead market and an intraday balancing market that operates like an auction. Due to fluctuations in power supply and demand, there is often an imbalance that leads to different prices in the two markets, providing an oppor
We propose a novel framework for risk-sensitive reinforcement learning (RSRL) that incorporates robustness against transition uncertainty. We define two distinct yet coupled risk measures: an inner risk measure addressing state and cost randomness and an outer risk measure capturing transition dynam
We investigate the use of Reinforcement Learning for the optimal execution of meta-orders, where the objective is to execute incrementally large orders while minimizing implementation shortfall and market impact over an extended period of time. Departing from traditional parametric approaches to pri
Robust asset allocation is a key challenge in quantitative finance, where deep-learning forecasters often fail due to objective mismatch and error amplification. We introduce the Signature-Informed Transformer (SIT), a novel framework that learns end-to-end allocation policies by directly optimizing
The automated mining of predictive signals, or alphas, is a central challenge in quantitative finance. While Reinforcement Learning (RL) has emerged as a promising paradigm for generating formulaic alphas, existing frameworks are fundamentally hampered by a triad of interconnected issues. First, the
Reinforcement Learning has emerged as a promising framework for developing adaptive and data-driven strategies, enabling market makers to optimize decision-making policies based on interactions with the limit order book environment. This paper explores the integration of a reinforcement learning age
In this paper, we tackle the dynamic mean-variance portfolio selection problem in a {"\it model-free"} manner, based on (generative) diffusion models. We propose using data sampled from the real model $\mathbb P$ (which is unknown) with limited size to train a generative model $\mathbb Q$ (from whic
In this paper, we introduce a novel reinforcement learning framework for optimal trade execution in a limit order book. We formulate the trade execution problem as a dynamic allocation task whose objective is the optimal placement of market and limit orders to maximize expected revenue. By employing
We propose a hybrid quantum-classical reinforcement learning framework for sector rotation in the Taiwan stock market. Our system employs Proximal Policy Optimization (PPO) as the backbone algorithm and integrates both classical architectures (LSTM, Transformer) and quantum-enhanced models (QNN, QRW
Portfolio optimization requires dynamic allocation of funds by balancing the risk and return tradeoff under dynamic market conditions. With the recent advancements in AI, Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL) has gained prominence in providing adaptive and scalable strategies for portfolio optimization.
In this paper, we propose an efficient implementation of deep policy gradient method (PGM) for optimal control problems in continuous time. The proposed method has the ability to manage the allocation of computational resources, number of trajectories, and complexity of architecture of the neural ne
Agent-based models (ABMs) are valuable for modelling complex, potentially out-of-equilibria scenarios. However, ABMs have long suffered from the Lucas critique, stating that agent behaviour should adapt to environmental changes. Furthermore, the environment itself often adapts to these behavioural c