Validation Digest - 2026-07-20

This digest summarizes the public validation surface available for the v0.2.0 release. It is a release note for reproducibility and contributor planning, not a trading-performance claim.

Scope

The digest covers reports and blocker notes merged or documented after the v0.1.0 public baseline:

• synthetic validation baseline on Windows CPU
• Baostock A-share validation report
• yfinance ETF-50 rate-limit failure mode
• public-data validation harness improvements
• benchmark and validation contribution workflow

Current Public Reports

Report	Source	Universe	Purpose	Status
validation_synthetic_20260716.md	Synthetic	Generated GBM panel	Cross-platform CLI and metric reproducibility	Merged
validation_baostock_20260716.md	Baostock	A-share public data	Public-data validation on a China-market source	Merged
public_data_mini_reproduction.md	yfinance	ETF mini example	Factor IC and public-data smoke reproduction	Merged
Issue #22 blocker report	yfinance	ETF-50 attempt	Documents HTTP 429 rate limiting	Documented

Main Takeaways

• The synthetic source is useful for checking plumbing, report generation, bootstrap paths, cost grids, and Windows CPU reproducibility. It is not expected to contain predictive signal.
• The Baostock path gives Chinese contributors a public-data route that does not depend on Yahoo Finance access.
• yfinance can fail with several different-looking errors when Yahoo Finance rate limits a network. JSONDecodeError, YFTzMissingError, and YFRateLimitError can all point to the same HTTP 429 root cause.
• Turnover and transaction costs dominate interpretation. High-turnover signals can deteriorate sharply under realistic cost assumptions.
• The current public evidence should be read as validation and reproducibility diagnostics, not as a deployable trading strategy.

Contributor Gaps

The next useful reports are:

• CUDA GPU tensor-factor benchmark.
• Linux CPU benchmark on a common cloud instance.
• Apple Silicon benchmark with a larger panel.
• A rerun of ETF-50 validation after yfinance rate limits clear.
• Another public-data case study with clearly documented data provenance.

Reproduction Entry Points

Use these entry points when adding a report:

python scripts/benchmark_tensor_factors.py --device auto

python scripts/public_data_validation.py \
  --source synthetic \
  --models equal_weight,momentum_20,alpha101_mean \
  --epochs 1 \
  --batch-size 4096 \
  --hidden 32 \
  --cost-grid-bps 0,7,15,30 \
  --bootstrap-samples 100

python scripts/public_data_validation.py \
  --source baostock \
  --preset cn-large-25 \
  --start 2021-01-01 \
  --end 2025-01-01 \
  --models equal_weight,momentum_20,alpha101_mean \
  --epochs 1 \
  --batch-size 4096 \
  --hidden 32 \
  --cost-grid-bps 0,7,15,30 \
  --bootstrap-samples 100

Report results in Discussions #13 or the pairing issue #22.