The Alpha Illusion: Reported Alpha from LLM Trading Agents Should Not Be Treated as Deployment Evidence

In three linesCritical study of LLM-based trading agents (FinCon, FinMem, TradingAgents, FinAgent, QuantAgent, FLAG-Trader). Reported Sharpe ratios do not constitute deployment evidence: temporal contamination, unmodeled frictions, and insufficient predictive calibration invalidate claims. Proposes P1-P6 protocol and modular architecture with LLM as audit interface.

Summary generated by Claude — human-verified