Adversarial Robustness Of Trading Signals

When to Use

Invoke this skill before promoting any ML trading-signal model to production — Random Forests, Gradient Boosted Trees, deep nets, or any model exposing a predict(X) callable. Financial microstructure is adversarial in the technical sense: a flash crash, a spoofing layer, or genuine quote noise can perturb order- book features by less than one bid-ask spread and flip a model's signal from BUY to SELL. A model that flips under such noise is unsafe to trade.

The skill produces a SignalAdversarialTester that injects epsilon-bounded perturbations into the validation feature matrix and reports:

1. The vulnerability score — % of samples whose signal flips, with a

one-sided Wilson upper confidence bound on that rate.

1. The flipped-sample indices — so quant research can attribute which

inputs sit on the decision boundary.

1. A deployment verdict — robust / vulnerable against a tolerance threshold,

in two strengths: is_robust (point estimate) and is_robust_at_ci (the confidence bound also clears the tolerance). Gate on the latter.

When NOT to Use

• **Differentiable models requiring a true worst-case bound.** This engine is a

black-box, gradient-free tester. For a differentiable net, real FGSM/PGD gives a tighter (and actually worst-case) attack: adv_x = x + ε·sign(∇ₓ L). Use a dedicated adversarial-robustness library (CleverHans, Foolbox, ART) instead, then feed that attack's flip rate into this governance gate if you want a uniform scoring contract.

• Provable-robustness requirements. This is empirical robustness — it can

only show a model is vulnerable, never prove it is robust. For a certified L2 radius use Cohen-style randomized smoothing (see references/standards.md §3).

• Non-ML signals (pure rule-based / threshold strategies with no learned

component). Adversarial perturbation of a fixed threshold is just sensitivity analysis; use backtest-parameter-sensitivity-analysis instead.

• Production-time / online monitoring. The perturbation sweep is O(n_trials)

expensive and assumes a static validation set. For live drift monitoring use concept-drift-vs-staleness-differentiation / model-staleness-detection.

• Insufficient validation data. With 5% of signals flip

noisetype=NOISERANDOMSIGN, # full-magnitude random-sign stress ntrials=25, # for montecarloworst only seed=42, # reproducible (reproducible-ml-pipelines) featurescales=trainscales, # from training set, not validation featurebounds=trainbounds, # [min, max] per feature for clipping cliptocleandomain=True, decision_threshold=0.5, ) ```

1. Run the evaluation:

``python tester = SignalAdversarialTester(config) report = tester.evaluate_model(model.predict, X_clean) ``

1. Interpret the verdict:

• report.is_robust_at_ci == True → the flip rate and its 95% Wilson upper

bound clear the tolerance. This is the promotion signal; the model may proceed subject to the other gates in your pipeline.

• report.is_robust == True but is_robust_at_ci == False → marginal.

The point estimate clears the tolerance but the validation set is too small to resolve it. Do not promote: grow the holdout (see standards.md §4).

• report.is_robust == False → reject. Route the model back to quant research

for adversarial training (retrain on perturbed data to smooth the decision boundary), feature re-engineering, or a higher decision threshold. Use tester.perturb(X_train, rng) to generate the augmentation with the same noise model the gate failed on.

1. Attribute the fragility. report.flipped_indices identifies exactly which

validation samples sit on a flippable boundary — the actionable set for a targeted adversarial-training augmentation.

Decision Points

| Situation | Action | |-----------|--------| | vulnerability_score_pct just under tolerance (e.g. 4.7% vs 5%) | Check is_robust_at_ci. If the Wilson upper bound does not clear the tolerance the pass is statistically marginal — grow the validation set; do not promote. | | Explicit feature_bounds are narrower than the validation range | Samples outside the bounds are held to the ε ball, not clipped all the way back — otherwise a multi-ε clip would be scored as an ε-bounded flip. Prefer bounds that actually contain the holdout. | | ValueError: X_clean contains N non-finite value(s) | A NaN/inf cell would poison the per-feature scale and silently zero the flip rate. Drop or impute the rows upstream; do not disable the check. | | random_sign passes but montecarlo_worst (n_trials=50) fails | The model is fragile to some perturbation direction that a single draw missed. Trust the worst-of-N bound; reject. | | Flips concentrate in a feature subset (inspect flipped_indices → rows) | The model is over-reliant on a few fragile features. Re-engineer or drop them rather than globally retrain. | | Flip rate is ~50% on a boundary-clustered set | Expected for a sharp threshold at the boundary — not a bug. Re-test on a realistic distribution, not a degenerate constant. | | Model returns probabilities, not labels | Handled automatically (argmax over a 2D array). Verify the class ordering matches your BUY/SELL convention. | | Need a true worst-case bound (not empirical) | This engine cannot provide it. Graduate to FGSM/PGD (differentiable models) or certified randomized smoothing. | | clip_to_clean_domain=True collapses all noise | The validation feature domain is degenerate (constant column). Either widen the domain via feature_bounds or set clip_to_clean_domain=False for stress tests that deliberately leave the manifold. | | Reproducibility required across CI runs | Always set seed. None makes the test non-deterministic and unfit for governance gating. |

Common Pitfalls

• Treating random_sign as worst-case. The legacy worst_case_sign name was

a misnomer — the signs are random, not gradient-derived. Worst-case directional noise needs the loss gradient (FGSM). montecarlo_worst gives a lower bound on the worst case by taking the max over N random trials; it is tighter than a single draw but still not a true worst case. Read the verdict accordingly.

• Testing on training data. The model has memorised its training set; flip

rates will be artificially low and the gate is meaningless. Always use a frozen out-of-sample holdout.

• Epsilon not calibrated to microstructure. A blanket epsilon=0.01 is wrong

when features have wildly different scales (price in $ vs a normalized ratio in [0,1]). Either pass per-feature feature_scales (training-set) or calibrate ε to one bid-ask spread per instrument.

• No domain clipping. Perturbing a price feature to a negative value, or a

normalized ratio above 1, produces infeasible inputs that overstate vulnerability (the model never sees them in production). Use clip_to_clean_domain=True or explicit feature_bounds.

• Gating on the point estimate alone. A 0% flip rate on 50 samples has a 95%

Wilson upper bound of 5.13% — it cannot clear a 5% tolerance. is_robust answers "did the point estimate clear?"; only is_robust_at_ci answers "did the evidence clear?". Promote on the latter.

• NaN in the validation set. Before v1.3.0 a single NaN cell made the

per-feature ptp NaN, which made every perturbation NaN, which decoded to one class for clean and adversarial alike — a silent 0% flip rate and an automatic PASS. Non-finite inputs and non-finite model outputs are now hard errors; treat them as data-quality defects, not as things to work around.

• Non-deterministic governance. A deployment gate that flips verdicts between

CI runs is worse than no gate. Always set seed; pin it in the model card.

• Single noise model. uniform is average-case; it can pass a model that

random_sign or montecarlo_worst fails. Run at least random_sign for governance; prefer montecarlo_worst for the tighter bound.

• Ignoring the probability path. A model returning 2D probabilities is decoded

via argmax; a 1D float score via decision_threshold. Verify the decode matches your signal convention before trusting the flip count.

• Using Gaussian noise only. Gaussian samples rarely reach the ε boundary, so

they under-state vulnerability versus random_sign (which always hits the boundary). Do not use Gaussian as the sole stress.

Verification

Run the unit tests:

python -m unittest discover -s skills/adversarial-robustness-of-trading-signals/scripts -v

What they assert:

• A robust model passes under uniform noise.
• A fragile model fails under random_sign and under montecarlo_worst.
• montecarlo_worst reports the max flip rate across n_trials (≥ any single trial).
• Same seed → identical report and flipped_indices (determinism).
• 2D probability matrices decode via argmax; 1D float scores via decision_threshold.
• Domain clipping suppresses infeasible perturbations (both implicit and explicit bounds).
• Explicit feature_scales collapse a huge ε; zero-variance features fall back to scale 1.0.
• Config validation rejects negative ε/tolerance, invalid noise_type, n_trials < 1,

non-positive feature_scales, mis-shaped feature_bounds, inverted bounds, bad batch_size, out-of-range ci_confidence_level; ε=0 logs a vacuous-gate warning.

• Inputs that used to yield a silent PASS now raise: non-finite X_clean,

zero-sample or zero-feature matrices, non-finite model output, higher-rank model output (which previously corrupted flipped_indices).

• The domain clip never moves a sample further than ε·scale, so an out-of-domain

sample cannot manufacture a flip.

• wilson_upper_bound matches values derived independently by solving the score

equation, and stays non-zero at zero flips.

• A 0-flip run on 50 samples is is_robust but not is_robust_at_ci; the same

result on 5000 samples clears both.

• Categorical (string) class labels are compared directly instead of raising.
• perturb() honours the ε budget and the feasible domain, and is seeded.
• Legacy worst_case_sign alias routes to random_sign (deprecation logged).
• report.as_dict() round-trips through JSON and carries seed, epsilon and

flip_tolerance_pct for the model card.

• batch_size chunking is byte-identical to whole-array evaluation.
• Non-2D input raises ValueError.

Confirm with the operational checklist in assets/checklist.md before promoting.

Success Criteria

An adversarial-robustness gate is healthy in production when:

1. Every model promotion produces a RobustnessReport persisted to the model

card with seed, epsilon, noise_type, n_trials, and vulnerability_score_pct.

1. Promotion is gated on is_robust_at_ci, not on vulnerability_score_pct

alone. A 5% tolerance needs roughly ≥ 2000 samples before a realistic observed rate can clear its own confidence bound (standards.md §4).

1. montecarlo_worst with n_trials ≥ 25 is the default governance noise model;

uniform/random_sign single-draw results are recorded but not gating.

1. epsilon is calibrated per instrument to one average bid-ask spread and the

calibration is documented (not a blanket 0.01).

1. Rejected models are routed to adversarial training with the flipped_indices

attached as the augmentation target set.

1. The gate is deterministic across CI runs (fixed seed); a re-run yields the

same verdict.

Related Skills

• feature-engineering-without-leakage — the validation set fed to this gate must

be leak-free or the robustness verdict is invalid.

• backtest-outlier-and-bad-tick-filtering — adversarial perturbations and bad-tick

outliers are two faces of the same noise; filter the latter, stress the former.

• reproducible-ml-training-pipelines — the seed discipline this gate depends on.
• model-card-documentation-for-trading-models — persist the RobustnessReport

(seed, ε, noise model, vulnerability score) into the model card.

• model-versioning-and-rollback — a regression in vulnerability score between

versions should block the promotion.

• backtest-parameter-sensitivity-analysis — for non-ML / rule-based strategies,

where adversarial perturbation reduces to parameter sensitivity.

• concept-drift-vs-staleness-differentiation — live complement: this gate is

pre-deployment; drift monitoring is post-deployment.

• class-imbalance-handling-for-rare-signal-events — rare-signal models have few

positive samples to flip; the flip-rate CI is correspondingly wide.

Source & license

This open-source skill is cataloged on AgentStack and links to its original source — we do not rehost the code.

• Author: HimanshuJ16
• Source: HimanshuJ16/Algo-Trading-Skills
• License: Apache-2.0
• Homepage: https://skills.himanshujangir.com

Install and usage instructions live in the source repository linked above.