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HARLF: Hierarchical Reinforcement Learning and Lightweight LLM-Driven Sentiment Integration for Financial Portfolio Optimization

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  • Benjamin Coriat
  • Eric Benhamou

Abstract

This paper presents a novel hierarchical framework for portfolio optimization, integrating lightweight Large Language Models (LLMs) with Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL) to combine sentiment signals from financial news with traditional market indicators. Our three-tier architecture employs base RL agents to process hybrid data, meta-agents to aggregate their decisions, and a super-agent to merge decisions based on market data and sentiment analysis. Evaluated on data from 2018 to 2024, after training on 2000-2017, the framework achieves a 26% annualized return and a Sharpe ratio of 1.2, outperforming equal-weighted and S&P 500 benchmarks. Key contributions include scalable cross-modal integration, a hierarchical RL structure for enhanced stability, and open-source reproducibility.

Suggested Citation

  • Benjamin Coriat & Eric Benhamou, 2025. "HARLF: Hierarchical Reinforcement Learning and Lightweight LLM-Driven Sentiment Integration for Financial Portfolio Optimization," Papers 2507.18560, arXiv.org.
  • Handle: RePEc:arx:papers:2507.18560
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    File URL: http://arxiv.org/pdf/2507.18560
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