QBX: A Compiler for Well-Formed, Auditable Alpha Programs
Yichong Bai, Kaigui Bian
Abstract
Formulaic alpha miners increasingly differ in how they generate candidates, yet each system typically couples its own representation, evaluator, and selector into a bespoke pipeline whose results are difficult to reproduce or compare. We present QBX, a compiler that defines a well-formed, auditable space of alpha programs. A finite, versioned block registry and whole-strategy port-DAG language define the candidate space; the compiler either rejects a proposal with structured diagnostics or emits an evidence-carrying IR with types, time-availability effects, executable linkage, and Merkle-style content identities. Compiler-closed actions keep search inside the admitted space, node identities support incremental evaluation, and context-bound root identities govern program deduplication and trial provenance. The availability-effect system rejects contract-visible look-ahead while admitting legal point-in-time forecasts. On Chinese A-share panels, evaluation-valid proposals increase from 26.8% for free strings and 36.4% for a grammar-only control to 97.7% for typed programs. Incremental evaluation replays search lineages 7.5 times faster with numerical parity, while the availability checker admits zero registered-contract violations across 23,342 candidates. Under matched LLM-call budgets, compiler-closed search reaches the pool-specific diagnostic frontier with substantially fewer calls. These results concern validity, reuse, and search efficiency within the registered vocabulary, not an increase in the information available from the market panel.
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