Hadi SoufiAI Systems Architect

Research · SSRN 2026

Four working papers.

On deterministic control, evaluation and discovery in agentic trading systems. Sole author.

  1. 01The Operating-Layer Dominance Hypothesis: Why Agentic Trading Alpha Is an Interface Problem, Not a Model ProblemH. Soufi · SSRN Working Paper · 2026Research and capital in agentic trading systems increasingly target model capability. This position paper argues that, in systems executing real capital, output-behavior variance is better explained by interface and execution parameters than by model reasoning content. It synthesizes evidence from multi-agent coordination architecture, production-scale live evaluation, and empirical alpha-decay studies into a testable operating-layer hypothesis.
  2. 02From Backtest to Deployment: A Staged-Capital Protocol for Evaluating Agentic Trading SystemsH. Soufi · SSRN Working Paper · 2026This paper proposes a staged-capital evaluation protocol for agentic trading systems: zero-weight shadow validation, forward paper-testing on live data, minimal live capital gated by deterministic mechanical exits, and gradual scaling gated by pre-registered statistical tests. The protocol is designed as a deployable and falsifiable engineering workflow rather than a reporting convention.
  3. 03A Three-Layer Reference Architecture for Deterministic Control in Agentic Trading SystemsH. Soufi · SSRN Working Paper · 2026This paper formalizes a three-layer reference architecture for agentic trading systems: a discovery layer, a reasoning layer, and a deterministic execution layer with a hard-gated kill-switch. It defines responsibilities, interfaces, failure boundaries, and evaluation criteria, framing the split as a testable specification rather than a design metaphor.
  4. 04Why Discovery Layers Guarantee Crowded Alpha: A Design Case for Quality-Diversity Search in Agentic Trading SystemsH. Soufi · SSRN Working Paper · 2026This paper argues that a discovery layer optimized only for predictive quality has no mechanism to penalize redundancy, creating structural pressure toward a small set of familiar factor families. It develops a crowding-by-construction argument and translates quality-diversity search into an objective specification for a discovery layer.