AlphaGAT: A Two-Stage Learning Approach for Adaptive Portfolio Selection

AlphaGAT: A Two-Stage Learning Approach for Adaptive Portfolio Selection

Shicheng Li, Jinshan Zhang , Feng Wang

Proceedings of the Thirty-Fourth International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence
Main Track. Pages 7500-7508. https://doi.org/10.24963/ijcai.2025/834

Portfolio selection is a critical task in finance, involving the allocation of resources across various assets. However, current methods often struggle to maintain robust performance due to the inherent low signal-to-noise ratio in raw financial data and shifts in data distribution. We propose AlphaGAT, a novel two-stage learning approach for portfolio selection, designed to adapt to different market scenarios. Inspired by the concept of alpha factors, which transform historical market data into actionable signals, the first stage introduces an advanced model named CATimeMixer for alpha factor generation with a novel loss function to improve the effectiveness and robustness. CATimeMixer integrates TimeMixer with Conv1D (C) and cross-asset Attention (A). Specifically, Conv1D enhances TimeMixer by capturing trend and seasonal features across different scales, while cross-asset attention enables TimeMixer to extract interrelationships between different assets. The second stage applies reinforcement learning to dynamically adjust weights, integrating alpha factors into trading signals. Recognizing the varying effectiveness of alpha factors across different periods, our RL agent innovatively transforms the alpha factors into graphs and employs graph attention networks (GAT) to discern the significance of different alpha factors, enhancing policy robustness. Extensive experiments on real-world market data show that our approach outperforms state-of-the-art methods.
Keywords:
Multidisciplinary Topics and Applications: MTA: Finance
Machine Learning: ML: Reinforcement learning