RankFIRST: Visual Analysis for Factor Investment By Ranking Stock Timeseries

In the era of quantitative investment, factor-based investing models are widely adopted in the construction of stock portfolios. These models explain the performance of individual stocks by a set of financial factors, e.g., market beta and company size. In industry, open investment platforms allow the online building of factor-based models, yet set a high bar on the engineering expertise of end-users. State-of-the-art visualization systems integrate the whole factor investing pipeline, but do not directly address domain users' core requests on ranking factors and stocks for portfolio construction. The current model lacks explainability, which downgrades its credibility with stock investors. To fill the gap in modeling, ranking, and visualizing stock time series for factor investment, we designed and implemented a visual analytics system, namely RankFIRST. The system offers built-in support for an established factor collection and a cross-sectional regression model viable for human interpretation. A hierarchical slope graph design is introduced according to the desired characteristics of good factors for stock investment. A novel firework chart is also invented extending the well-known candlestick chart for stock time series. We evaluated the system on the full-scale Chinese stock market data in the recent 30 years. Case studies and controlled user evaluation demonstrate the superiority of our system on factor investing, in comparison to both passive investing on stock indices and existing stock market visual analytics tools.