From a27200cc5ee3aa2db4b2b424680325330605abe4 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: mathias <mathias.bergqvist@gmail.com>
Date: Wed, 27 May 2026 21:59:43 +0000
Subject: [PATCH] docs: add Phase 1 experiment spec (JEPA representation PoC)

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+# Experiment Spec: Phase 1 — JEPA Representation PoC
+
+## Hypothesis
+
+> We believe that a TS-JEPA encoder trained on G10 FX hourly data (2008–2022) will
+> produce latent market-state embeddings that are structurally separable by volatility
+> regime without explicit regime labels, measurable by silhouette score > 0.35 on
+> k-means clusters evaluated against realised-volatility regime labels on held-out
+> 2023 data including at least one structural break.
+
+This hypothesis is FALSE if silhouette score ≤ 0.35 OR linear probe R² ≤ 0.40 on
+held-out evaluation.
+
+**Prerequisites:** Phase 0 passed (MAE silhouette > 0.20, TS-JEPA reproduced).
+
+## Background
+
+Phase 0 confirmed that SSL-based representation learning can find regime structure in
+FX time-series. Phase 1 tests whether JEPA's specific inductive bias (predict target
+embeddings from context embeddings, never reconstruct raw data) produces richer
+representations than a simple MAE — and whether those representations are useful for
+risk management tasks (measurable via linear probe).
+
+## Design
+
+### Data
+- **Source:** DUKASCopy, all G10 pairs (EUR/USD, GBP/USD, USD/JPY, USD/CHF, AUD/USD, USD/CAD, NZD/USD, EUR/GBP, EUR/JPY, EUR/CHF), hourly
+- **Train:** 2008-01-01 – 2022-12-31 (all 10 pairs, jointly)
+- **Held-out test:** 2023-01-01 – 2023-12-31 (sealed until final evaluation)
+- **Features:** log-return, rolling 20-period HV, VIX (daily → hourly)
+- **Regime label (evaluation only):** rolling 30-day HV percentile; binary + 4-class (quartiles)
+
+### Model
+- **Architecture:** TS-JEPA (Ennadir et al., 2025)
+  - Context encoder: maps observed window → latent embedding
+  - Target encoder: EMA of context encoder (momentum β ≈ 0.996); stop-gradient
+  - Predictor: shallow MLP bridging context → target embedding
+- **Masking horizons:** ablate K ∈ {1h, 8h, 24h}; context window = 120h
+- **Training:** multi-pair joint training (one model, all G10 pairs)
+
+### Baseline
+- Phase 0 MAE (best masking horizon from Phase 0)
+- PCA on raw features (Phase 0 baseline)
+
+### Ablations
+1. TS-JEPA vs MAE — is JEPA's no-reconstruction inductive bias adding value?
+2. Single-pair (EUR/USD only) vs. multi-pair — does joint training improve representations?
+3. Masking horizon K: {1h, 8h, 24h}
+
+## Acceptance Criteria
+
+- [ ] Silhouette score > 0.35 on held-out 2023 data (k-means k=3–5, binary HV label)
+- [ ] Linear probe R² > 0.40 on frozen embeddings vs. realised-vol decile
+- [ ] PC1 / rolling-HV correlation < 0.85 (encoder learning more than volatility level)
+- [ ] TS-JEPA silhouette exceeds Phase 0 MAE silhouette by > 5%
+- [ ] Rerun ×3 within ±10% of reported silhouette
+
+## Out of Scope
+
+- VaR, ES, distributional forecasting (Phase 3)
+- Exotic pairs beyond G10
+- Options pricing, alpha generation, live trading
+- Any data after 2022-12-31 for training; test set opened only for final evaluation
+- Regime detection backtesting (Phase 2 — embedding drift as early warning)
+
+## Null Result Protocol
+
+If primary criteria not met:
+1. If silhouette > 0.20 but ≤ 0.35: JEPA shows partial structure; not sufficient for Phase 2. Investigate whether multi-pair training, longer context window, or additional features close the gap. One retry permitted with documented rationale.
+2. If silhouette ≤ 0.20: regression from Phase 0; investigate JEPA training stability (collapse risk). Do not proceed.
+3. If linear probe R² ≤ 0.40 despite good silhouette: embeddings are structured but not encoding risk-relevant information. Record as a finding; reconsider feature set.
+4. Record all results in `results/summaries/phase-1-[pass|null].md`
+5. Write findings to brain: `brain_write wing=jepa-fx hall=failures`
+
+## Risks
+
+| Risk | Canary | Mitigation |
+|---|---|---|
+| EMA encoder collapses | All embeddings converge to near-zero; loss goes to ~0 early | Verify EMA momentum schedule; check stop-gradient implementation |
+| Encoder learns only EUR/USD vol | PC1 dominated by EUR/USD HV even in multi-pair model | Evaluate per-pair silhouette; if EUR/USD dominates, weight loss by pair |
+| Phase 0 silhouette was data-split artefact | Phase 1 MAE baseline doesn't reproduce Phase 0 numbers | Fix random seeds; document split methodology in Phase 0 |
+| Insufficient regime diversity (2008–2022) | Embedding clusters don't separate 2023 structural break | Verify 2023 test includes high-vol episode; add 4-class label as backup |