Agentic Financial Reasoning, Hedging & Audit
IEEE Big Data Cup 2026 · Phoenix, Arizona · 14–17 December 2026
Official website · Submit challenge paper · Submit Letter of Intent · IEEE Cup overview
FinReason Cup is Challenge 03 of the IEEE Big Data Cup 2026. It asks a central question for financial AI: can a system's reasoning be executed, checked, and reproduced—not merely presented as a plausible answer?
The competition brings together three complementary tasks spanning symbolic reasoning, sequential financial decisions, and structured verification.
Solve multi-step financial problems and return both a final answer and a step-by-step reasoning trace. Predictions are planned to be checked against gold traces generated from executable FinChain templates.
The exact problem subset, trace schema, ChainEval version, and numerical tolerance policy will be frozen with the starter kit.
Select an asset pair and manage a zero-net-dollar position over time using point-in-time prices, news, and corporate filings. The task is designed to reward relative-value reasoning rather than unhedged directional exposure.
The planned data are derived from HERCULEAN. Exact market windows, eligible assets, execution assumptions, transaction costs, and position-validity rules will be published with the dataset and scorer.
Perform targeted numeric-fact verification on organizer-packaged SEC EDGAR XBRL filing materials by comparing reported values with values derived from their calculation context. This task is not a full financial-statement audit.
The planned release combines public filing cases and separately constructed held-out cases subject to leakage review.
| Task | Provisional evaluation |
|---|---|
| Task 1 · Reason | Final-answer accuracy and step-level ChainEval |
| Task 2 · Hedge | Cumulative return, Sharpe ratio, and maximum drawdown |
| Task 3 · Verify | Accuracy and structural, extraction, and calculation error rates |
Final scoring formulas, tolerances, tie-break procedures, submission contracts, and validity rules will be published with the public scorers.
Teams seeking final ranking and awards must submit a challenge paper through the official FinReason Cup SC03 track in CyberChair.
- Length: up to 6 pages total, including references
- Format: IEEE two-column conference template
- Deadline: 15 November 2026, 23:59 Anywhere on Earth
CyberChair has not yet updated its displayed deadline and currently shows a 10-page upload limit. The FinReason Cup organizer deadline is 15 November 2026, 23:59 Anywhere on Earth, and FinReason teams should follow the challenge requirement above and submit no more than 6 pages total, including references.
The paper portal is separate from the competition submission path. The final task rules will specify which solution materials each team must provide, including any required predictions, source code, and reproducibility materials. They will use the verified competition link published on the official challenge website after organizer testing. Both routes share the 15 November deadline.
Submission does not guarantee publication. Any publication is subject to conference peer review, acceptance, camera-ready submission, registration, and presentation requirements.
Teams planning to participate should submit one Letter of Intent per team:
Submit the FinReason Cup Letter of Intent →
The LOI supports challenge planning, organizer communication, and aggregate participation statistics. It does not replace either the challenge paper or the final competition submission.
| Resource | Status |
|---|---|
| Official challenge website | Live |
| Letter of Intent | Open |
| Datasets and development splits | Coming soon |
| Starter kits, schemas, validators, and baselines | Coming soon |
| Participant support channel | Coming soon |
| Challenge paper submission | Open |
| Competition solution-material submission | Under organizer testing |
Final verified competition-platform and submission links will be posted on the official challenge website after workflow testing.
| Milestone | Date |
|---|---|
| Final challenge paper and solution materials | 15 November 2026, 23:59 AoE |
| Winning teams announced | 25 November 2026 |
| IEEE Big Data 2026, Phoenix, Arizona | 14–17 December 2026 |
Dataset, starter kit, competition-platform, and private-evaluation dates will be published on the official challenge website after organizer testing.
This repository currently contains the source for the organizer-maintained FinReason Cup website. Verified participant resources—including datasets, starter kits, schemas, validators, baselines, and submission links—will be linked here as they are released.
Please use only links marked as verified on the official challenge website.
Requirements: Node.js 22.13 or newer.
npm ci
npm run devOpen http://localhost:3000.
Run the same checks used by the GitHub Pages workflow:
npm run lint
npm testnpm test builds the static GitHub Pages export and validates its rendered HTML
contract. Pushes to main deploy through
.github/workflows/deploy-pages.yml.
The Letter of Intent is hosted on Google Forms. Responses are available to the organizer team and are used for challenge operations, communication permitted by the form, and aggregate reporting. Do not include sensitive information. Participant support and the correction or deletion process will be published with the participant guidance.
The organizer team is led by The Fin AI, with contributors affiliated with MBZUAI, McGill University, Stevens Institute of Technology, Yale University, and the University of Manchester. Affiliations do not imply institutional sponsorship.
Dataset release dates, platform rules, award categories, and data terms remain subject to organizer and IEEE confirmation.
Last reviewed: 22 August 2026.