[2603.00285] TraderBench: How Robust Are AI Agents in Adversarial Capital Markets?

Computer Science > Artificial Intelligence arXiv:2603.00285 (cs) [Submitted on 27 Feb 2026] Title:TraderBench: How Robust Are AI Agents in Adversarial Capital Markets? Authors:Xiaochuang Yuan, Hui Xu, Silvia Xu, Cui Zou, Jing Xiong View a PDF of the paper titled TraderBench: How Robust Are AI Agents in Adversarial Capital Markets?, by Xiaochuang Yuan and 4 other authors View PDF HTML (experimental) Abstract:Evaluating AI agents in finance faces two key challenges: static benchmarks require costly expert annotation yet miss the dynamic decision-making central to real-world trading, while LLM-based judges introduce uncontrolled variance on domain-specific tasks. We introduce TraderBench, a benchmark that addresses both issues. It combines expert-verified static tasks (knowledge retrieval, analytical reasoning) with adversarial trading simulations scored purely on realized performance-Sharpe ratio, returns, and drawdown-eliminating judge variance entirely. The framework features two novel tracks: crypto trading with four progressive market-manipulation transforms, and options derivatives scoring across P&L accuracy, Greeks, and risk management. Trading scenarios can be refreshed with new market data to prevent benchmark contamination. Evaluating 13 models (8B open-source to frontier) on ~50 tasks, we find: (1) 8 of 13 models score ~33 on crypto with <1-point variation across adversarial conditions, exposing fixed non-adaptive strategies; (2) extended thinking helps retrieval ...