Configuration

Configuration

Environment variables

All configuration is via environment variables. Defaults are the offline backends; no .env file is needed to run the pipeline or tests.

Variable	Default	Options	Description
FINSIGHT_SENTIMENT_BACKEND	lexical	lexical, finbert	Sentiment scoring backend. finbert requires pip install "finsight[finbert]"
FINSIGHT_DATA_BACKEND	synthetic	synthetic, csv, yfinance	Market data source. yfinance requires pip install "finsight[market]"
FINSIGHT_SEED	42	integer	Random seed for synthetic data generation
FINSIGHT_N_ASSETS	20	integer	Number of synthetic assets
FINSIGHT_N_DAYS	756	integer	Number of trading days in synthetic history
FINSIGHT_LOOKBACK_WINDOW	5	integer	EWM smoothing half-life for signal (days)
FINSIGHT_PURGE_DAYS	5	integer	Walk-forward CV purge window (days around fold boundary to exclude)
FINSIGHT_TXN_COST_BPS	10	float	Transaction cost per unit turnover (basis points)
FINSIGHT_SCRAMBLE	0	0, 1	Set to 1 to scramble returns (null test)
FINSIGHT_CSV_PATH	—	file path	Path to CSV price data (required when DATA_BACKEND=csv)

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Backend matrix

Component	Offline default	Optional real backend	Install
Sentiment	lexical (finance lexicon, no download)	finbert (HuggingFace FinBERT)	pip install "finsight[finbert]"
Market data	synthetic (deterministic, ground-truth signal)	csv (user-supplied), yfinance (live fetch)	pip install "finsight[market]"

Optional backends degrade gracefully: if FinBERT is not installed, FinSight warns and falls back to lexical. If yfinance is not installed, it falls back to synthetic.

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.env.example

# Copy to .env and fill in values for real backends.
# Everything works offline without this file.

# Sentiment backend (default: lexical)
# FINSIGHT_SENTIMENT_BACKEND=finbert

# Market data backend (default: synthetic)
# FINSIGHT_DATA_BACKEND=yfinance
# FINSIGHT_CSV_PATH=/path/to/prices.csv

# Synthetic market parameters
FINSIGHT_SEED=42
FINSIGHT_N_ASSETS=20
FINSIGHT_N_DAYS=756
FINSIGHT_LOOKBACK_WINDOW=5
FINSIGHT_PURGE_DAYS=5
FINSIGHT_TXN_COST_BPS=10

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Docker

# Offline run (synthetic data, lexical sentiment)
docker build -t finsight .
docker run --rm finsight

# With real backends via env var
docker run --rm \
  -e FINSIGHT_SENTIMENT_BACKEND=finbert \
  -e FINSIGHT_DATA_BACKEND=yfinance \
  finsight