Alpha-R1: Alpha Screening with LLM Reasoning via Reinforcement Learning

Abstract

Signal decay and regime shifts pose recurring challenges for data-driven investment strategies in non-stationary markets, where conventional time-series and machine learning approaches often struggle to generalize beyond historical correlations. While large language models (LLMs) offer strong capabilities for processing unstructured information, their potential to support quantitative factor screening through explicit economic reasoning remains underexplored. Existing factor-based methods typically reduce alphas to numerical time series, overlooking the semantic rationale that determines when a factor is economically relevant. We present Alpha-R1, an RL-aligned LLM framework for context-aware alpha screening. Its core mechanism, semantic gating, evaluates each candidate factor's semantic profile against a dynamically constructed market state description, selecting a sparse subset of factors whose economic rationale aligns with current market conditions. The selection model is trained via group relative policy optimization (GRPO), using realized portfolio returns as the primary reward signal. Under a 12-month out-of-sample evaluation, Alpha-R1 achieves annualized returns of 47.87% on S&P 500 and 40.57% on CSI 300 with Sharpe ratios of 1.62 and 2.23. These results, obtained under a bounded candidate-pool evaluation protocol, provide evidence for second-stage semantic factor reranking in non-stationary markets. The full implementation and resources are available at https://github.com/FinStep-AI/Alpha-R1.