Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) improves Large Language Model (LLM) performance on knowledge-intensive tasks but depends heavily on initial search query quality. Current methods, often using Reinforcement Learning (RL), typically focus on query formulation or reasoning over results, without explicitly encouraging persistence after a failed search. We introduce ReZero (Retry-Zero), a novel RL framework that directly rewards the act of retrying a search query following an initial unsuccessful attempt. This incentivizes the LLM to explore alternative queries rather than prematurely halting. ReZero demonstrates significant improvement, achieving 46.88% accuracy compared to a 25% baseline. By rewarding persistence, ReZero enhances LLM robustness in complex information-seeking scenarios where initial queries may prove insufficient.

Trading in Over-The-Counter (OTC) markets is facilitated by broker-dealers, in comparison to public exchanges, e.g., the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE). Dealers play an important role in stabilizing prices and providing liquidity in OTC markets. We apply machine learning methods to model and predict the trading behavior of OTC dealers for US corporate bonds. We create sequences of daily historical transaction reports for each dealer over a vocabulary of US corporate bonds. Using this history of dealer activity, we predict the future trading decisions of the dealer. We consider a range of neural network-based prediction models. We propose an extension, the Pointwise-Product ReZero (PPRZ) Transformer model, and demonstrate the improved performance of our model. We show that individual history provides the best predictive model for the most active dealers. For less active dealers, a collective model provides improved performance. Further, clustering dealers based on their similarity can improve performance. Finally, prediction accuracy varies based on the activity level of both the bond and the dealer.

Deep networks have enabled significant performance gains across domains, but they often suffer from vanishing/exploding gradients. This is especially true for Transformer architectures where depth beyond 12 layers is difficult to train without large datasets and computational budgets. In general, we find that inefficient signal propagation impedes learning in deep networks. In Transformers, multi-head self-attention is the main cause of this poor signal propagation. To facilitate deep signal propagation, we propose ReZero, a simple change to the architecture that initializes an arbitrary layer as the identity map, using a single additional learned parameter per layer. We apply this technique to language modeling and find that we can easily train ReZero-Transformer networks over a hundred layers. When applied to 12 layer Transformers, ReZero converges 56% faster on enwiki8. ReZero applies beyond Transformers to other residual networks, enabling 1,500% faster convergence for deep fully connected networks and 32% faster convergence for a ResNet-56 trained on CIFAR 10.