Signal or Noise in Multi-Agent LLM-based Stock Recommendations?

Abstract

We present the first portfolio-level validation of MarketSenseAI, a deployed multi-agent LLM equity system. All signals are generated live at each observation date, eliminating look-ahead bias. The system routes four specialist agents (News, Fundamentals, Dynamics, and Macro) through a synthesis agent that issues a monthly equity thesis and recommendation for each stock in its coverage universe, and we ask two questions: do its buy recommendations add value over both passive benchmarks and random selection, and what does the internal agent structure reveal about the source of the edge? On the S&P 500 cohort (19 months) the strong-buy equal-weight portfolio earns +2.18%/month against a passive equal-weight benchmark of +1.15% (approximating RSP), a +25.2% compound excess, and ranks at the 99.7th percentile of 10,000 Monte Carlo portfolios (p=0.003). The S&P 100 cohort (35 months) delivers a +30.5% compound excess over EQWL with consistent direction but formal significance not reached, limited by the small average selection of ~10 stocks per month. Non-negative least-squares projection of thesis embeddings onto agent embeddings reveals an adaptive-integration mechanism. Agent contributions rotate with market regime (Fundamentals leads on S&P 500, Macro on S&P 100, Dynamics acts as an episodic momentum signal) and this agent rotation moves in lockstep with both the sector composition of strong-buy selections and identifiable macro-calendar events, three independent views of the same underlying adaptation. The recommendation's cross-sectional Information Coefficient is statistically significant on S&P 500 (ICIR=+0.489, p=0.024). These results suggest that multi-agent LLM equity systems can identify sources of alpha beyond what classical factor models capture, and that the buy signal functions as an effective universe-filter that can sit upstream of any portfolio-construction process.