בדיקות נתונים בנקודת זמן להטיית הצצה קדימה ולנתוני מאקרו מתוקנים

# Point-in-Time (PIT) Data Validation


# Point-in-Time (PIT) Data Validation

**Docker image**: `ml4t`

## Purpose
Demonstrate the operational checks needed to keep a backtest free of
lookahead bias on real ETF and macroeconomic data. Three threads run
through the notebook: feature-time vs decision-time alignment, a
correlation-based heuristic for catching obvious feature leakage, and the
bitemporal (vintage) view of macro data via the FRED provider.

## Learning Objectives
- Distinguish *event time* (when something happened) from *knowledge time*
  (when we learned about it), and the bitemporal axis for macro releases.
- Show why a centered moving average leaks future information, and why a
  level-versus-return correlation heuristic misses it.
- Build the corrected scale-invariant heuristic (feature-return against
  future-return) that does fire for `close.pct_change(-1)` features.
- Determine, by measurement, what the macro panel's timestamps mean, and
  what a forward-fill over them costs when they are period stamps.
- Query FRED with `vintage_date` to see how the GDP advance estimate
  differs from the revised value.

## Book reference
Chapter 2, §2.3 (data quality framework — point-in-time correctness and
bitemporal data). The figure below is the §2.3 illustration.

## Prerequisites
- ETF parquet files materialized under `ML4T_DATA_PATH`.
- Macro parquet (FRED snapshot) materialized under `ML4T_DATA_PATH` or
  loadable via `data.load_macro`.
- `FRED_API_KEY` environment variable for the live vintage query, which is
  the last section so that everything before it runs without a key
  (free key at https://fred.stlouisfed.org/docs/api/api_key.html).

```python
"""Point-in-Time Data Validation."""

import os
from datetime import datetime

import plotly.graph_objects as go
import polars as pl
from ml4t.data.providers import FREDProvider

from data import load_etfs, load_macro
from utils.style import COLORS, show_plotly_with_alt
```

### Declared parameters

`LEAK_THRESHOLD` is the correlation above which the validator in the last-but-one section
calls a feature leaky. It is declared here rather than living on the class so the value the
reader sees and the value the check uses are the same one, and Section 4 prints the measured
correlations it has to separate.

`MONTHLY_RELEASE_LAG_DAYS` and `QUARTERLY_RELEASE_LAG_DAYS` are how long after a period ends
its first estimate is published. They are round numbers standing in for a real release
calendar: US payrolls and unemployment land on the first Friday after the reference month,
CPI in the middle of the following month, and the GDP advance estimate about four weeks
after the quarter closes. A production system reads the actual calendar; these two make the
size of the correction visible.

```python
DEMO_SYMBOL = "SPY"
MA_WINDOW = 5  # window for the leakage demonstrations
MA_WINDOW_LONG = 20  # window for the figure
PLOT_TAIL_DAYS = 120
LEAK_THRESHOLD = 0.30  # |corr| above which the validator flags a feature
MAX_GAP_DAYS = 5
EXECUTION_LAG_ROWS = 1  # trading days between a close-of-day signal and its fill

MONTHLY_RELEASE_LAG_DAYS = 7
QUARTERLY_RELEASE_LAG_DAYS = 30
MACRO_DEMO_SERIES = "unrate"
```

## 1. Load Real Market Data

Daily bars for one ETF anchor every example below.

```python
spy = load_etfs().filter(pl.col("symbol") == DEMO_SYMBOL).sort("timestamp")
print(f"{DEMO_SYMBOL}: {len(spy):,} rows; {spy['timestamp'].min()} to {spy['timestamp'].max()}")
spy.head()
```

## 2. Lookahead Bias: A Visual Demonstration

A trailing moving average of width $w$ at time $T$ averages $[T - w + 1,\ T]$, which is what
a live system can compute. A *centered* one is the same window slid forward so that $T$ sits
near its middle, which puts some of its inputs after $T$.

Exactly how many depends on the library's centering convention and on whether the width is
odd or even, so the next cell asks rather than assumes: running the centered average over a
ramp makes each output reveal the window that produced it.

```python
def centered_window_offsets(width: int) -> tuple[int, int]:
    """Return the first and last offsets, relative to T, of a centered window of `width`.

    Averaging a ramp gives back the midpoint of whatever window was used, so one output value
    identifies the window exactly.
    """
    ramp = pl.DataFrame({"x": [float(i) for i in range(4 * width)]}).with_columns(
        pl.col("x").rolling_mean(window_size=width, center=True).alias("centered")
    )
    row = next(i for i, v in enumerate(ramp["centered"]) if v is not None)
    # The mean of a ramp is its window's midpoint, so this recovers the window's first input.
    first_input = ramp["centered"][row] - (width - 1) / 2
    return int(first_input - row), int(first_input + width - 1 - row)


for _w in (MA_WINDOW, MA_WINDOW_LONG):
    _lo, _hi = centered_window_offsets(_w)
    print(
        f"Centered window of width {_w:>2}: [T{_lo:+d}, T{_hi:+d}], "
        f"{_hi} of {_w} inputs are in the future"
    )
```

```python
spy_ma = (
    spy.with_columns(
        pl.col("close").rolling_mean(window_size=MA_WINDOW_LONG).alias("ma_trailing"),
        pl.col("close").rolling_mean(window_size=MA_WINDOW_LONG, center=True).alias("ma_centered"),
    )
    .drop_nulls()
    .tail(PLOT_TAIL_DAYS)
)

_tracking = spy_ma.select(
    (pl.col("close") - pl.col("ma_trailing")).abs().mean().alias("trailing"),
    (pl.col("close") - pl.col("ma_centered")).abs().mean().alias("centered"),
)
print(
    f"Mean absolute distance from the close over the plotted window: "
    f"trailing {_tracking['trailing'][0]:.2f}, centered {_tracking['centered'][0]:.2f}"
)
```

```python
fig = go.Figure()
fig.add_trace(
    go.Scatter(
        x=spy_ma["timestamp"].to_list(),
        y=spy_ma["close"].to_list(),
        name="SPY close",
        line=dict(color=COLORS["blue"], width=1),
    )
)
fig.add_trace(
    go.Scatter(
        x=spy_ma["timestamp"].to_list(),
        y=spy_ma["ma_trailing"].to_list(),
        name=f"{MA_WINDOW_LONG}d trailing MA",
        line=dict(color=COLORS["slate"], width=2),
    )
)
fig.add_trace(
    go.Scatter(
        x=spy_ma["timestamp"].to_list(),
        y=spy_ma["ma_centered"].to_list(),
        name=f"{MA_WINDOW_LONG}d centered MA",
        line=dict(color=COLORS["copper"], width=2, dash="dash"),
    )
)
fig.update_layout(
    title=f"{DEMO_SYMBOL} close with trailing and centered moving averages",
    xaxis_title="Date",
    yaxis_title=f"{DEMO_SYMBOL} price",
    height=420,
)
show_plotly_with_alt(
    fig,
    "A price line rising across about six months, with two moving averages drawn over it. "
    "The solid trailing average runs below the price and turns after each move in it. The "
    "dashed centered average runs above the trailing one for the whole window, shifted "
    "left relative to it, and tracks the middle of the price's oscillation rather than "
    "lagging behind it.",
)
```

The centered average sits closer to the close, by the measured distance printed above, and
it turns where the price turns rather than after it. Both follow from the same thing: half
its inputs are prices that had not printed yet. No live system can produce that line, so a
backtest that uses it reports skill the strategy could not have had.

What the two measured windows show is that the future share does not fall away as the window
widens: it approaches half, wobbling with the parity of the width rather than declining. The
distance leaked does grow, at roughly half the width. So a longer centered average is not a
smaller violation; it is a violation that reaches further ahead.

There is a second tell, and it is the one that shows up first in practice. A centered
average has no value for the most recent rows, because they are still waiting for inputs,
so `drop_nulls` above silently ends the plotted series short of the data. A feature that
cannot be computed for today is a feature no live system can trade on, and that missing
tail is visible long before any correlation test is run.

## 3. Why the Naive Correlation Heuristic Fails

A leakage test that suggests itself is to correlate a feature's *level* with the next
period's *return*. It does not work, and the reason is not subtle once stated: a price
level is dominated by where the series has drifted to over years, and next-day returns are
close to mean-zero noise around that drift. The correlation is between a slow trend and a
fast wiggle, and it comes out near zero whether or not the feature contains tomorrow's
price. The next cell scores three features, one of which is tomorrow's close itself.

```python
def naive_leakage_corr(df: pl.DataFrame, feature: str, price: str = "close") -> float:
    """Correlation between a level feature and the next-period price return.

    Reproduces the textbook-warning heuristic that *seems* like it should
    catch lookahead but rarely does because it compares incompatible scales.
    """
    enriched = df.with_columns(
        (pl.col(price).shift(-1) / pl.col(price) - 1).alias("next_ret")
    ).drop_nulls([feature, "next_ret"])
    return float(enriched.select(pl.corr(feature, "next_ret")).item())
```

```python
naive_features = spy.with_columns(
    pl.col("close").rolling_mean(window_size=MA_WINDOW).alias("ma_trailing"),
    pl.col("close").rolling_mean(window_size=MA_WINDOW, center=True).alias("ma_centered"),
    pl.col("close").shift(-1).alias("tomorrow_close"),
).drop_nulls()

LEAKAGE_FEATURES = ["ma_trailing", "ma_centered", "tomorrow_close"]

naive_results = pl.DataFrame(
    [
        {"feature": f, "naive_corr_with_next_return": naive_leakage_corr(naive_features, f)}
        for f in LEAKAGE_FEATURES
    ]
)
naive_results
```

All three score near zero, including the one that *is* tomorrow's price. The test does not
separate a clean feature from a leaking one, so a feature matrix passing it has learned
nothing about itself.

What the test needs is for both sides to be the same kind of quantity. Turning the feature
into its own period-over-period return does that, and it is what the next section builds.

## 4. A Correct Scale-Invariant Leakage Test

Convert any feature to its own period-over-period return, then correlate that with the next
period's price return. A feature built from $\mathrm{close}_{T+k}$ now exposes itself: for
$k \ge 1$ the feature's return at $T$ *is* the price return $k$ periods ahead, so the
correlation goes to one.

```python
def leakage_corr_scale_invariant(df: pl.DataFrame, feature: str, price: str = "close") -> float:
    """Correlation between a feature's own return and the next price return.

    Most useful when `feature` is a price-like (level) series — for return-
    shaped features the pct_change is unstable near zero, so the caller
    should pass them through directly instead.
    """
    enriched = (
        df.with_columns(
            pl.col(feature).pct_change().alias("feat_ret"),
            (pl.col(price).shift(-1) / pl.col(price) - 1).alias("next_ret"),
        )
        .drop_nulls(["feat_ret", "next_ret"])
        .filter(pl.col("feat_ret").is_finite() & pl.col("next_ret").is_finite())
    )
    if enriched.is_empty():
        return float("nan")
    return float(enriched.select(pl.corr("feat_ret", "next_ret")).item())
```

```python
fixed_results = pl.DataFrame(
    [
        {
            "feature": f,
            "scale_invariant_corr": leakage_corr_scale_invariant(naive_features, f),
        }
        for f in LEAKAGE_FEATURES
    ]
)
fixed_results
```

The same three features now sort: the trailing average stays low, the centered average rises
because part of its window sits in the future, and `tomorrow_close` saturates near one
because it is the next day's price.

What separates them is a gap in the middle of the scale, and the validator later in this
notebook puts its threshold there. The gap is what makes a threshold possible at all: a
detector whose clean and leaking cases sat close together would need a cutoff chosen to
produce the answer already known, which is not a detector.

## 5. Signal-to-Trade Lag: Trading Days, Not Calendar Days

A signal computed from the close of $T$ can be acted on no earlier than the open of $T+1$.
The shift has to be by *rows* rather than by calendar days, because the next tradable
moment after a Friday close is a Monday open and no amount of date arithmetic knows which
Mondays are holidays. Shifting the timestamp column by rows inherits the trading calendar
from the data itself.

```python
def validate_signal_trade_lag(signals: pl.DataFrame, execution_lag: int = 1) -> pl.DataFrame:
    """Tag each signal with the earliest tradable date `execution_lag` rows ahead."""
    return signals.sort("timestamp").with_columns(
        pl.col("timestamp").alias("signal_date"),
        pl.col("timestamp").shift(-execution_lag).alias("earliest_execution"),
    )
```

```python
spy_with_signal = spy.with_columns(
    (pl.col("close") / pl.col("close").shift(MA_WINDOW) - 1).alias("momentum_signal")
)
_lagged = validate_signal_trade_lag(spy_with_signal, execution_lag=EXECUTION_LAG_ROWS)
_calendar_gap = _lagged.select(
    (pl.col("earliest_execution") - pl.col("signal_date")).dt.total_days().alias("days")
).drop_nulls()
print(
    f"Calendar days between a signal and its earliest execution: "
    f"{_calendar_gap['days'].min()} to {_calendar_gap['days'].max()}, "
    f"for a lag of {EXECUTION_LAG_ROWS} trading day(s)"
)
print(_calendar_gap.group_by("days").len().sort("days"))
_lagged.select(
    ["timestamp", "close", "momentum_signal", "signal_date", "earliest_execution"]
).drop_nulls().head(8)
```

## 6. What the Macro Panel's Timestamps Mean

Macro series arrive at different cadences and the panel stores them side by side on one daily
grid, so a column has to be carried forward between its own releases. The usual advice is to
forward-fill and never back-fill, and that advice is correct and not sufficient: it is safe
only if the timestamp is the date the number was *published*. If the timestamp is the period
the number *describes*, forward-filling from it hands a backtest a figure weeks before anyone
outside the statistical agency had it.

Which convention this panel uses is a question about the file, so the next cells ask it.

```python
macro = load_macro()
macro = macro.rename({col: col.lower() for col in macro.columns})

date_col = "timestamp" if "timestamp" in macro.columns else "date"
_series_cols = [c for c in macro.columns if c != date_col]

freshness = (
    pl.DataFrame(
        {
            "series": _series_cols,
            "nulls": [macro[c].null_count() for c in _series_cols],
            "value_changes": [
                macro.select((pl.col(c) != pl.col(c).shift(1)).sum()).item() for c in _series_cols
            ],
        }
    )
    .with_columns(
        (pl.col("value_changes") / (macro.height / 365.25)).round(1).alias("changes_per_year")
    )
    .sort("changes_per_year")
)
print(f"Macro panel: {macro.height:,} rows, {macro[date_col].min()} to {macro[date_col].max()}")
print(f"Distinct dates: {macro[date_col].n_unique():,} (a row per calendar day, weekends included)")
freshness
```

Two things are already visible. Every column is complete: there are no nulls to forward-fill,
because the panel arrives pre-filled. And the change counts sort the columns into cadences
without anyone declaring them, from a few changes a year up to one per business day.

The convention question is answered by *when* the changes happen.

```python
_change_day = (
    pl.concat(
        [
            macro.select(
                pl.lit(c).alias("series"),
                pl.col(date_col).dt.day().alias("day_of_month"),
            ).filter(
                macro.select((pl.col(c) != pl.col(c).shift(1)).alias("x"))["x"]
                & macro.select(pl.col(c).shift(1).is_not_null().alias("y"))["y"]
            )
            for c in _series_cols
        ]
    )
    .group_by("series", "day_of_month")
    .len()
)
_first_of_month = (
    _change_day.group_by("series")
    .agg(
        pl.col("len").sum().alias("changes"),
        pl.col("len").filter(pl.col("day_of_month") == 1).sum().alias("on_the_first"),
    )
    .with_columns((pl.col("on_the_first") / pl.col("changes")).alias("share_on_the_first"))
    .sort("share_on_the_first", descending=True)
)
print("Share of each series' value changes that land on the first of a month:")
_first_of_month
```

The low-cadence series change their value on the first of the month, every time. That is not
a release calendar: no statistical agency publishes on the first of every month, and none
publishes a quarter's output on the first day of that quarter. It is the period stamp. FRED
labels a monthly observation with the first day of the month it describes and a quarterly one
with the first day of the quarter, and the panel has carried each value forward from there.

So the unemployment rate for a month is readable in this panel from that month's first day,
before the month it measures has finished, let alone been surveyed and published. The
forward-fill in this panel is not PIT-safe, and adding a forward-fill of its own would change
nothing, because there is nothing left to fill.

```python
_period_days = {"monthly": 31, "quarterly": 92}


def stamp_to_availability(frame: pl.DataFrame, column: str, cadence: str) -> pl.DataFrame:
    """Move a period-stamped series to the date its first estimate could have been read.

    The stamp is the first day of the period, so the period ends roughly a period length later
    and the first estimate follows the declared release lag after that.
    """
    lag_days = _period_days[cadence] + (
        MONTHLY_RELEASE_LAG_DAYS if cadence == "monthly" else QUARTERLY_RELEASE_LAG_DAYS
    )
    return frame.select(
        (pl.col(date_col) + pl.duration(days=lag_days)).alias("available_from"),
        pl.col(column).alias(f"{column}_pit"),
    )


_demo = macro.select(date_col, MACRO_DEMO_SERIES)
_pit = stamp_to_availability(_demo, MACRO_DEMO_SERIES, "monthly")
_joined = (
    _demo.join(_pit, left_on=date_col, right_on="available_from", how="left")
    .with_columns(pl.col(f"{MACRO_DEMO_SERIES}_pit").forward_fill())
    .drop_nulls()
)
_differs = _joined.filter(pl.col(MACRO_DEMO_SERIES) != pl.col(f"{MACRO_DEMO_SERIES}_pit"))

print(
    f"Rows where the panel's {MACRO_DEMO_SERIES} and the release-lagged version disagree: "
    f"{_differs.height:,} of {_joined.height:,} "
    f"({100 * _differs.height / _joined.height:.0f}%)"
)
print(
    "Largest disagreement: "
    f"{(_differs[MACRO_DEMO_SERIES] - _differs[f'{MACRO_DEMO_SERIES}_pit']).abs().max():.1f} "
    "percentage points"
)
_joined.filter(pl.col(date_col).dt.year() == 2020).head(12)
```

The two columns disagree on three days in four, and the widest disagreement is larger than
the whole range the series occupies in an ordinary decade: the unemployment rate moved by
more than ten points inside two months in 2020, and the panel's column carries the move
weeks before it was published.

The lag applied here is a round number standing in for a release calendar, so the corrected
column is not itself production-grade. What it establishes is the direction and the magnitude:
the uncorrected column is early, on most days, by an amount that is large exactly when the
data is interesting. A macro feature built straight off this panel is a feature that knows the
recession before the recession was announced.

The general rule, and the reason this notebook is here: **a timestamp is a claim about when
something was knowable, and the file rarely says which claim it is making.** Determine it by
measurement, once, and record the answer where the loader is.

## 7. PIT Validator Walkthrough

The scale-invariant leakage test, a date-monotonicity check and a gap audit, wrapped so a
whole feature matrix can be run through them in one call. The leakage threshold is the
declared `LEAK_THRESHOLD`, and Section 4's table is what justifies putting it where it is:
the clean features and the leaking ones are separated by most of the scale, so the cutoff
sits in empty space rather than between two adjacent measurements.

```python
class PITValidator:
    """Point-in-time validation for daily price-and-feature panels."""

    def __init__(self, df: pl.DataFrame, date_col: str = "timestamp"):
        self.df = df
        self.date_col = date_col
        self.violations: list[dict] = []

    def check_future_leakage(self, feature_col: str, price_col: str = "close") -> dict:
        corr = leakage_corr_scale_invariant(self.df, feature_col, price_col)
        severity = "HIGH" if abs(corr) > LEAK_THRESHOLD else "LOW"
        result = {
            "feature": feature_col,
            "scale_invariant_corr": round(corr, 4),
            "severity": severity,
            "violation": severity == "HIGH",
        }
        if result["violation"]:
            self.violations.append(result)
        return result

    def check_date_gaps(self, max_gap_days: int = MAX_GAP_DAYS) -> dict:
        gaps = (
            self.df.sort(self.date_col)
            .with_columns(pl.col(self.date_col).diff().dt.total_days().alias("gap_days"))
            .filter(pl.col("gap_days") > max_gap_days)
        )
        return {
            "rows": len(self.df),
            "gaps_above_threshold": len(gaps),
            "max_gap_days": int(gaps["gap_days"].max()) if len(gaps) > 0 else 0,
        }

    def check_monotonic_dates(self) -> dict:
        diffs = self.df[self.date_col].diff().drop_nulls().dt.total_days()
        is_sorted = bool((diffs >= 0).all())
        return {"is_monotonic": is_sorted, "violation": not is_sorted}
```

```python
spy_features = spy.with_columns(
    pl.col("close").rolling_mean(window_size=MA_WINDOW).alias("ma_short_trailing"),
    pl.col("close").rolling_mean(window_size=MA_WINDOW_LONG).alias("ma_long_trailing"),
    pl.col("close").rolling_mean(window_size=MA_WINDOW, center=True).alias("ma_short_centered"),
    pl.col("close").shift(-1).alias("tomorrow_close"),
).drop_nulls()

validator = PITValidator(spy_features)
validation_table = pl.DataFrame(
    [
        validator.check_future_leakage(f)
        for f in [
            "ma_short_trailing",
            "ma_long_trailing",
            "ma_short_centered",
            "tomorrow_close",
        ]
    ]
)
validation_table
```

```python
gap_check = validator.check_date_gaps()
mono_check = validator.check_monotonic_dates()
print(
    f"Date gaps over {MAX_GAP_DAYS} calendar days: "
    f"{gap_check['gaps_above_threshold']} (max {gap_check['max_gap_days']} days); "
    f"monotonic={mono_check['is_monotonic']}"
)
print(f"Features flagged as leaking: {len(validator.violations)} of {validation_table.height}")
```

The two constructed-from-the-future features are flagged and the two trailing averages are
not, which is the ordering the section set out to produce. It is worth being clear about
what that does and does not establish. The validator was run on features whose status was
known in advance, so this is a test of the validator, not of the features. Run against a
feature matrix nobody has audited, it will catch leakage that shows up as correlation with
the next return, and will not catch leakage that does not: a feature using a future value
of something *other* than the price it is scored against passes this check untouched.

## 8. Bitemporal GDP via FRED `vintage_date`

Macro data is revised. The FRED API's `realtime_start` / `realtime_end`
parameters return the values **as known at** a chosen historical date.
`FREDProvider.fetch_ohlcv` exposes that as `vintage_date`.

The cell below requires `FRED_API_KEY` (free signup); if the key is
missing the fetch fails loudly rather than substituting a synthetic
illustration.

```python
FRED_API_KEY = os.getenv("FRED_API_KEY")
if not FRED_API_KEY:
    raise RuntimeError(
        "FRED_API_KEY not set. Get a free key at "
        "https://fred.stlouisfed.org/docs/api/api_key.html and export it."
    )

provider = FREDProvider()

gdp_early = provider.fetch_ohlcv(
    "GDP",
    "2023-01-01",
    "2023-09-30",
    frequency="quarterly",
    vintage_date="2023-11-01",
)
gdp_late = provider.fetch_ohlcv(
    "GDP",
    "2023-01-01",
    "2023-09-30",
    frequency="quarterly",
    vintage_date="2024-06-01",
)
provider.close()

revisions = (
    gdp_early.select(["timestamp", pl.col("close").alias("vintage_2023_11_01")])
    .join(
        gdp_late.select(["timestamp", pl.col("close").alias("vintage_2024_06_01")]),
        on="timestamp",
    )
    .with_columns(
        (
            (pl.col("vintage_2024_06_01") - pl.col("vintage_2023_11_01"))
            / pl.col("vintage_2023_11_01")
            * 100
        )
        .round(3)
        .alias("revision_pct")
    )
)
revisions
```

The earlier quarters agree between the two vintages because they had already been revised
to their current values by the first vintage date. The most recent quarter does not: what a
query in late 2023 returned for it was the advance estimate, and by mid-2024 that number
had moved.

The revision is small in percentage terms, which is the ordinary case and the reason this
is easy to skip. The problem is not the size of one revision. It is that a backtest reading
the current value is reading a number that did not exist at the decision date, for every
revised series it touches, and the direction of a revision is not noise: estimates are
revised toward what actually happened.



## Key Takeaways

1. **Close to half of a centered window lies in the future, and widening it does not help.**
   The offsets are measured above rather than assumed, because the convention differs
   between libraries and with the parity of the width. The future share approaches half as
   the window grows, and the distance leaked grows with it at about half the width, so a
   longer centered average reaches further ahead rather than violating less. The figure
   shows the consequence and the printed distances measure it.

2. **Correlating a level against a return does not detect leakage.** Tomorrow's close, used
   directly as a feature, scores near zero on that test, alongside a clean trailing average.
   A feature matrix that passes it has learned nothing about itself.

3. **Putting both sides in return space makes the same test work**, and the reason the
   threshold is placeable is that the clean and leaking cases end up separated by most of the
   scale. A cutoff between two adjacent measurements would be a cutoff chosen to produce the
   answer already known.

4. **A trading-day lag has to be applied by rows, not by dates.** One trading day is one to
   five calendar days depending on where in the week and the holiday calendar it falls, and
   the counts are printed above. Shifting the timestamp column by rows inherits the calendar
   from the data.

5. **The macro panel's timestamps are period stamps, not release dates, and this is
   measurable.** Every low-cadence series changes value on the first of a month, which no
   release calendar does. The panel arrives already carried forward from those stamps, so it
   is complete, a further forward-fill is a no-op, and reading a column gives a figure weeks
   before it was published. Compared against a release-lagged version, the panel's own
   column disagrees on three days in four, and at the widest by more than ten points of
   unemployment - the spring of 2020, when the difference between knowing and not knowing
   was the whole trade.

6. **Macro values are revised, so the current value is not the value that was available.**
   Vintage queries return what was knowable at a date. Revisions move estimates toward what
   actually happened, which is precisely the direction that flatters a backtest.

7. **Detection is a backstop, not a substitute for construction.** Every check here was run
   against features whose status was known in advance, which tests the check. On an unaudited
   matrix these checks catch the leakage that correlates with the scored return and miss the
   leakage that does not.

**Next**: `15_survivorship_bias_detection` adds the universe-membership dimension to the
temporal correctness shown here.
![notebook output](figures/p1_1.png)