Vokasi UNESA Bulletin of Engineering, Technology and Applied Science
Vol. 3 No. 3 (2026): (In Progress)

Comparing Transformer-Based Sentiment Models for Technical-Filtered Trading Signal Generation on NASDAQ-100 Stocks

Rifki Ainul Yaqin (Universitas Adhirajasa Reswara Sanjaya (ARS University))
Ignatius Wiseto Prasetyo Agung (Information Engineering Study Program, Faculty of Information Technology, Universitas Adhirajasa Reswara Sanjaya (ARS University), Bandung, Indonesia)
Toni Arifin (Information Engineering Study Program, Faculty of Information Technology, Universitas Adhirajasa Reswara Sanjaya (ARS University), Bandung, Indonesia)
Erfian Junianto (Information Engineering Study Program, Faculty of Information Technology, Universitas Adhirajasa Reswara Sanjaya (ARS University), Bandung, Indonesia)



Article Info

Publish Date
06 Aug 2026

Abstract

Predicting stock price movements remains challenging due to nonlinear, dynamic market behavior. News sentiment and technical indicators (RSI, moving averages) each show predictive value, but few studies integrate both within a single, robustly validated framework. This study proposes an algorithmic trading framework integrating daily news sentiment from four pre-trained transformer models (ProsusAI/finbert, nlptown/bert-base-multilingual-uncased-sentiment, yiyanghkust/finbert-tone, and soleimanian/financial-roberta-large-sentiment) with RSI and moving average filters to generate buy signals on 30 NASDAQ-100 stocks. Beyond standard backtesting, the framework is validated through five analyses: benchmark comparison, exit-rule sensitivity, look-ahead-bias alignment, statistical testing, and walk-forward validation. Over a 2-year simulation (57,434 news articles), buy signals were triggered when RSI fell below 40, price pulled back 0.5–5% below MA20, and price remained within 10% above MA50, with entry on day i+1 and a profit-triggered exit. All four models produced positive cumulative returns (123.33–187.84%, Sharpe Ratio 2.00–2.73), remaining profitable under transaction costs up to 0.3% per trade. Benchmarking showed roughly half the Maximum Drawdown of naive baselines despite lower raw returns, favoring selectivity over return maximization. The stop-loss/take-profit variant substantially reduced performance, while stricter news-timestamp alignment left results robust (Sharpe Ratio above 1.5). Statistical tests found three of six model-pair differences significant at the 5% level, though the two top-performing models are statistically indistinguishable (p = 0.546). Out-of-sample evaluation confirmed profitability in the most recent test segment, with acknowledged sub-period variability. These findings position news sentiment as an effective, risk-disciplined complement to technical analysis, with model selection depending on investor priorities.

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Journal Info

Abbrev

vubeta

Publisher

Subject

Computer Science & IT Engineering Mechanical Engineering Transportation

Description

Vokasi Unesa Bulletin Of Engineering, Technology and Applied Science is a peer-reviewed, Quarterly International Journal, that publishes high-quality theoretical and experimental papers of permanent interest, that have not previously been published in a journal, in the field of engineering, ...