Point in time research

Point-in-Time Quant Research

A historical price series is not enough to make a backtest point-in-time. The moment a strategy reads a financial fact, that fact must already have been observable, admissible, and executable by a real investor. Most "great" backtests are not fraudulent — they are contaminated by information that did not exist yet. This skill is the discipline that prevents it.

When this matters

Trigger this skill for any research that turns data into a claim about future returns: factor IC, long-short alpha, Sharpe, a screener edge, an ML signal, a strategy backtest. The user usually will not say "look-ahead bias" — they will say "does this strategy work?", "backtest momentum on SPY", "is this factor predictive?". That is exactly when the leaks below do their quiet damage.

The three silent leaks

1. Period-end dating. A fact for the quarter ended 31 Mar describes activity through 31 Mar, but the market only learns it weeks later (earnings release, 10-Q in May). Joining on period_end hands the simulated investor weeks of free foresight. Anchor on the filing/acceptance time, never the period end.
2. Latest-value overwrite. Databases answer "what is the value for this period now?" — overwriting the originally-reported number with later restatements. A backtest then trades on a revision that did not exist at the time. Use the originally-filed version, not the latest.
3. Same-session execution. A release at 16:05 ET is public that day but cannot be traded at the 16:00 close. Map public time → tradable time with an exchange calendar and an explicit execution lag.

The admissibility rule (apply before every signal)

A fact version j is usable for a signal evaluated at time t only if all hold:

• its tradable-from timestamp ≤ t (observable and executable),
• the version was the one known at t — a later revision is not backfilled,
• its issuer/security/identifier mappings are valid at t,
• every parent of a derived fact (e.g. a reconstructed Q4) was itself admissible,
• it passed the declared quality gates.

If you cannot establish all five, exclude the fact and record why. Reduced coverage from honest exclusion is not a defect; higher coverage bought by backfilling is.

Workflow — order matters

Temporal integrity sits upstream of every other robustness check. Neutralization, costs, and multiple-testing corrections cannot rescue a result whose inputs were never available. Always in this order:

1. Reconstruct the historical information set first (apply the admissibility rule; anchor on filing/acceptance time; keep original versions).
2. Then compute the factor and test predictability.
3. Then apply economic and statistical robustness (the gauntlet below).

Quantify the distortion: the A–D information sets

Materialize four versions of the same panel, changing only the data-time / data-version definition while factor formula, universe, portfolio rule and costs stay fixed. The contrast isolates how much "alpha" is really a timing artefact.

Variant	Activation time	Value version	What it isolates
A Extreme naive	fiscal period end	latest (revised)	upper-bound look-ahead stress
B Date corrected	filing date	latest (revised)	fixes date error, keeps version contamination
C Strict SEC PIT	acceptance time	original as-filed	conservative, auditable
D Tradable PIT	next session after filing	original as-filed	best observable + execution-aware

A–B = activation-date error · B–C = version contamination · C–D = execution alignment. A positive A–D alpha gap is the look-ahead inflation; it is largest for timing-sensitive factors (earnings surprise, accruals) and small for slow valuation levels.

Run it now. Do not just describe the A–D framework — execute the harness:

# Verify the harness works (no data required):
python scripts/information_set_compare.py --demo

# With real data:
python scripts/information_set_compare.py \
  --facts your_facts.csv \
  --prices your_prices.csv

The script produces A–D levels and paired differences (CAPM alpha + Newey–West t, Sharpe, rank IC, turnover, block-bootstrap p-values, Benjamini–Hochberg q-values). Run --help for the exact CSV column contract. Read references/methodology.md for the formal time semantics and statistical procedures.

The validation gauntlet

A surviving factor must clear every gate; report each result, including failures. Within Aria these map onto existing commands.

Gate	Question	Aria command
Market-neutral	Does return survive removing market beta?	/backtest, /ptbt
Sector-neutral	Stock selection, or an industry bet?	/factor, /sector
Transaction costs	Survives turnover cost?	cost ladder (below)
Borrow costs	Is the short leg economic?	cost ladder (below)
Subperiods	One regime, or persistent?	/wf (walk-forward)
OOS selection	Does a past-chosen config persist?	/wf anchored/rolling

Cost ladder. Re-price the long-short net of 0/0, 10/50, 20/100, 30/200, 30/500 bps (transaction / annual borrow) and check the edge degrades gracefully rather than vanishing. Because the inflated (A) and strict (D) variants trade at near-identical rates, costs subtract almost equally from both — so an A–D gap that survives the ladder is genuinely a timing effect, not a cost artefact.

Honest reporting

• Real vs fake alpha. Price-only momentum is usually beta contamination, not alpha — it collapses under market-neutralization. A value composite (E/P + S/P) that survives sector-neutralization and the cost ladder is a real candidate. State plainly which is which.
• Report what failed. A factor that died after neutralization is a finding, not a deletion. Keep it in the log.
• Multiple testing. Record the number of factor/parameter trials. Interpret the final statistic against the search (Benjamini–Hochberg q, deflated Sharpe), never as an isolated Sharpe ratio.
• Pilot ≠ population. A small or current-membership universe carries survivorship bias in the levels; the A–D paired differences are far more robust (same universe across variants). Say so; do not over-claim magnitude.

Code review mode

When the user provides actual code for review, do not re-explain the general framework — they know it. Instead:

1. Scan specifically for whichever of the three leaks remains unresolved. If the user says "I already fixed period-end dating and latest-value overwrite," take that at face value and check only same-session execution.
2. Same-session execution in code. If the merge joins on filing_date and the trade happens at that same day's close (or open), flag it: 8-K / 10-Q filings often arrive after the 16:00 ET close, so that close is not an admissible execution time. Fix: np.busday_offset(filing_date, 1) → trade next session's open or close.
3. Derived-fact lineage. If a derived column (e.g. reconstructed Q4 = annual − 9-month YTD) does not track its own filing_date separately, flag it — the derived fact inherits the later parent's availability time.
4. Give the minimal diff, not a rewrite. One targeted busday_offset fix is the answer; a full code rewrite is not.

When the user dismisses methodology

If a user says "I know all this, just give me the Sharpe" or "skip the lecture":

• Do NOT simply comply and return an uninspected number.
• Do NOT give a long lecture either.
• One sentence: state why the raw Sharpe is uninterpretable without a data contract (look-ahead inflation can be 2–3× on valuation factors).
• Then make a concrete offer: "Run python scripts/information_set_compare.py --demo to see the distortion magnitude, then share your data contract and I will run the full gauntlet — /backtest, /wf, /factor, cost ladder."
• The offer must reference Aria commands, not generic third-party tools.

Audit checklist

Before reporting any backtest result, run the red-flag audit in references/audit_checklist.md. If any flag is unresolved, fix it or disclose it — never bury it.

Bundled resources

• scripts/information_set_compare.py — the A–D four-variant comparison harness (CAPM/NW, Sharpe, IC, turnover, block bootstrap, BH). Stdlib + pandas/numpy.
• references/methodology.md — formal time semantics, the admissibility indicator, and the exact statistical procedures.
• references/audit_checklist.md — the pre-report look-ahead / survivorship / cost red-flag checklist.