# FinCon: A Synthesized LLM Multi-Agent System with Conceptual Verbal Reinforcement for Enhanced Financial Decision Making

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2407.06567 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.06567/

## Key facts

- Cited by 113 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Financial trading and forecasting agents, one of 16 directions in LLM agents and tool use.
- Builds on 56 of its 103 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 9 Jul 2024.

## Placed in

- LLM agents and tool use / [Financial trading and forecasting agents](https://mlsanity.com/agents/financial-trading-and-forecasting-agents/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 56)

- [Proximal Policy Optimization Algorithms](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1707.06347/) (2017)
- [Chain-of-Thought Prompting Elicits Reasoning in Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.11903/) (2022)
- [ReAct: Synergizing Reasoning and Acting in Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.03629/) (2022)
- [Reflexion: Language Agents with Verbal Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.11366/) (2023)
- [Generative Agents: Interactive Simulacra of Human Behavior](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.03442/) (2023)
- [Playing Atari with Deep Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1312.5602/) (2013)
- [Tree of Thoughts: Deliberate Problem Solving with Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.10601/) (2023)
- [Asynchronous Methods for Deep Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1602.01783/) (2016)
- [A Survey on Large Language Model based Autonomous Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.11432/) (2023)
- [MetaGPT: Meta Programming for A Multi-Agent Collaborative Framework](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.00352/) (2023)
- [Improving Factuality and Reasoning in Language Models through Multiagent Debate](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.14325/) (2023)
- [Competition-Level Code Generation with AlphaCode](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.07814/) (2022)
- [ExpeL: LLM Agents Are Experiential Learners](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.10144/) (2023)
- [Reasoning with Language Model is Planning with World Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.14992/) (2023)
- [ChatEval: Towards Better LLM-based Evaluators through Multi-Agent Debate](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.07201/) (2023)
- [Automatic Prompt Optimization with "Gradient Descent" and Beam Search](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.03495/) (2023)
- [AgentVerse: Facilitating Multi-Agent Collaboration and Exploring Emergent Behaviors](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.10848/) (2023)
- [Towards Reasoning in Large Language Models: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.10403/) (2022)
- [Learning to Communicate with Deep Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1605.06676/) (2016)
- [Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning: A Selective Overview of Theories and Algorithms](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1911.10635/) (2019)
- [LLM-Planner: Few-Shot Grounded Planning for Embodied Agents with Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.04088/) (2022)
- [CodeT: Code Generation with Generated Tests](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.10397/) (2022)
- [Large Language Models as Tool Makers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.17126/) (2023)
- [Ghost in the Minecraft: Generally Capable Agents for Open-World Environments via Large Language Models with Text-based Knowledge and Memory](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.17144/) (2023)
- [FinGPT: Open-Source Financial Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.06031/) (2023)
- [Building Cooperative Embodied Agents Modularly with Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.02485/) (2023)
- [Exploring Collaboration Mechanisms for LLM Agents: A Social Psychology View](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.02124/) (2023)
- [Agent Hospital: A Simulacrum of Hospital with Evolvable Medical Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.02957/) (2024)
- [ART: Automatic multi-step reasoning and tool-use for large language models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.09014/) (2023)
- [RoCo: Dialectic Multi-Robot Collaboration with Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.04738/) (2023)

## Built on by (most cited first, 30 of 113)

- [Towards Large Reasoning Models: A Survey of Reinforced Reasoning with Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.09686/) (2025)
- [TradingAgents: Multi-Agents LLM Financial Trading Framework](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.20138/) (2024)
- [From LLM Reasoning to Autonomous AI Agents: A Comprehensive Review](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.19678/) (2025)
- [Fin-R1: A Large Language Model for Financial Reasoning through Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.16252/) (2025)
- [A Survey of LLM-Driven AI Agent Communication: Protocols, Security Risks, and Defense Countermeasures](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.19676/) (2025)
- [A Survey on the Optimization of Large Language Model-based Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.12434/) (2025)
- [LLM Agents Should Employ Security Principles](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.24019/) (2025)
- [Nuclear Deployed: Analyzing Catastrophic Risks in Decision-making of Autonomous LLM Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.11355/) (2025)
- [Where Did It All Go Wrong? A Hierarchical Look into Multi-Agent Error Attribution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.04886/) (2025)
- [Graph-based Agent Memory: Taxonomy, Techniques, and Applications](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.05665/) (2026)
- [Large Language Model-based Data Science Agent: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.02744/) (2025)
- [A Survey of Reasoning and Agentic Systems in Time Series with Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.11575/) (2025)
- [Uncovering Security Threats and Architecting Defenses in Autonomous Agents: A Case Study of OpenClaw](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.12644/) (2026)
- [Automatic Red Teaming LLM-based Agents with Model Context Protocol Tools](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.21011/) (2025)
- [A Comprehensive Survey on Agent Skills: Taxonomy, Techniques, and Applications](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.07358/) (2026)
- [Your AI, Not Your View: The Bias of LLMs in Investment Analysis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.20957/) (2025)
- [HALO: Hierarchical Autonomous Logic-Oriented Orchestration for Multi-Agent LLM Systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.13516/) (2025)
- [LiveTradeBench: Seeking Real-World Alpha with Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.03628/) (2025)
- [Look-Ahead-Bench: a Standardized Benchmark of Look-ahead Bias in Point-in-Time LLMs for Finance](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.13770/) (2026)
- [Agentic AI Systems Applied to tasks in Financial Services: Modeling and model risk management crews](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.05439/) (2025)
- [PSG-Agent: Personality-Aware Safety Guardrail for LLM-based Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.23614/) (2025)
- [Enhancing Jailbreak Attacks on LLMs via Persona Prompts](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.22171/) (2025)
- [A Survey of Scaling in Large Language Model Reasoning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.02181/) (2025)
- [MASS: Muli-agent simulation scaling for portfolio construction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.10278/) (2025)
- [A Call for Collaborative Intelligence: Why Human-Agent Systems Should Precede AI Autonomy](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.09420/) (2025)
- [Maris: A Formally Verifiable Privacy Policy Enforcement Paradigm for Multi-Agent Collaboration Systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.04799/) (2025)
- [ContestTrade: A Multi-Agent Trading System Based on Internal Contest Mechanism](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.00554/) (2025)
- [MICA: Multi-Agent Industrial Coordination Assistant](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.15237/) (2025)
- [SoK: Security of Autonomous LLM Agents in Agentic Commerce](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.15367/) (2026)
- [Towards Robust Evaluation of STEM Education: Leveraging MLLMs in Project-Based Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.17050/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Large language models (LLMs) have demonstrated notable potential in conducting complex tasks and are increasingly utilized in various financial applications. However, high-quality sequential financial investment decision-making remains challenging. These tasks require multiple interactions with a volatile environment for every decision, demanding sufficient intelligence to maximize returns and manage risks. Although LLMs have been used to develop agent systems that surpass human teams and yield impressive investment returns, opportunities to enhance multi-sourced information synthesis and optimize decision-making outcomes through timely experience refinement remain unexplored. Here, we introduce the FinCon, an LLM-based multi-agent framework with CONceptual verbal reinforcement tailored for diverse FINancial tasks. Inspired by effective real-world investment firm organizational structures, FinCon utilizes a manager-analyst communication hierarchy. This structure allows for synchronized cross-functional agent collaboration towards unified goals through natural language interactions and equips each agent with greater memory capacity than humans. Additionally, a risk-control component in FinCon enhances decision quality by episodically initiating a self-critiquing mechanism to update systematic investment beliefs. The conceptualized beliefs serve as verbal reinforcement for the future agent's behavior and can be selectively propagated to the appropriate node that requires knowledge updates. This feature significantly improves performance while reducing unnecessary peer-to-peer communication costs. Moreover, FinCon demonstrates strong generalization capabilities in various financial tasks, including single stock trading and portfolio management.