# Carry Trade Research Model

> A college finance experiment that grew into a documented research system with explicit data provenance, validation, APIs, and a frontend dashboard.

Published: 2025-08-24
Updated: 2026-08-04
Canonical URL: https://aidanmarshall.ai/projects/carry-trade-model/
Repository: https://github.com/Aidan2111/carry-trade-model

## Context

I started the project as a finance major before modern coding agents existed. A rough carry-trade experiment grew as I learned to build data pipelines, model validation, APIs, and frontend systems.


## Problem

Market-data demos often blur live inputs, derived signals, and invented fallback values. This public version needed to make those boundaries visible while keeping the system runnable with free data sources.


## Approach

The project collects FX data, reads optional macro and news inputs, exposes a Flask API, and presents the available results in a React and TypeScript dashboard.

- Yahoo Finance and public exchange-rate endpoints provide free FX inputs where available.
- News, macro, predictions, and performance stay empty when their required source is missing.
- Time-series checks test for leakage, no-skill behavior, and recovery of planted signals.

## Implementation

The current code separates API routes, data providers, collectors, modeling experiments, dashboard integration, and paper-only trading research. Compatibility wrappers keep the original entry points usable while the canonical implementation lives under src/carry_trade.


## Tradeoffs and limitations

This is a research and portfolio project, not a trading product. Free data has coverage and reliability limits, older scripts remain for historical context, and model outputs should not be treated as investment advice.


## What it demonstrates

The repo shows the progression from a finance idea to a more disciplined software artifact with provenance, fallbacks, tests, documentation, and a usable dashboard contract.


## Technology

Python, scikit-learn, React, TypeScript

## Verification

- Public repository: https://github.com/Aidan2111/carry-trade-model