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Smart(phone) investing? A within investor-time analysis of new technologies and trading behavior
(2021)
Using transaction-level data from two German banks, we study the effects of smartphones on investor behavior. Comparing trades by the same investor in the same month across different platforms, we find that smartphones increase purchasing of riskier and lottery-type assets and chasing past returns. After the adoption of smartphones, investors do not substitute trades across platforms and buy also riskier, lottery-type, and hot investments on other platforms. Using smartphones to trade specific assets or during specific hours contributes to explain our results. Digital nudges and the device screen size do not mechanically drive our results. Smartphone effects are not transitory.
Incentivized experiments in which individuals receive monetary rewards according to the outcomes of their decisions are regarded as the gold standard for preference elicitation in experimental economics. These task-related real payments are considered necessary to reveal subjects' "true preferences". Using a systematic, large-sample approach with three subject pools of private investors, professional investors, and students, we test the effect of task-related monetary incentives on risk preferences elicited in four standard experimental tasks. We find no systematic differences in behavior between subjects in the incentivized and non-incentivized regimes. We discuss implications for academic research and for applications in the field.
We merge administrative information from a large German discount brokerage firm with regional data to examine if financial advisors improve portfolio performance. Our data track accounts of 32,751 randomly selected individual customers over 66 months and allow direct comparison of performance across self-managed accounts and accounts run by, or in consultation with, independent financial advisors. In contrast to the picture painted by simple descriptive statistics, econometric analysis that corrects for the endogeneity of the choice of having a financial advisor suggests that advisors are associated with lower total and excess account returns, higher portfolio risk and probabilities of losses, and higher trading frequency and portfolio turnover relative to what account owners of given characteristics tend to achieve on their own. Regression analysis of who uses an IFA suggests that IFAs are matched with richer, older investors rather than with poorer, younger ones.
We conduct a field experiment with clients of a German universal bank to explore the impact of peer information on sustainable retail investments. Our results show that infor-mation about peers’ inclination towards sustainable investing raises the amount allocated to stock funds labeled sustainable, when communicated during a buying decision. This effect is primarily driven by participants initially underestimating peers’ propensity to invest sustainably. Further, treated individuals indicate an increased interest in addi-tional information on sustainable investments, primarily on risk and return expectations. However, when analyzing account-level portfolio holding data over time, we detect no spillover effects of peer information on later sustainable investment decisions.
Peer effects can lead to better financial outcomes or help propagate financial mistakes across social networks. Using unique data on peer relationships and portfolio composition, we show considerable overlap in investment portfolios when an investor recommends their brokerage to a peer. We argue that this is strong evidence of peer effects and show that peer effects lead to better portfolio quality. Peers become more likely to invest in funds when their recommenders also invest, improving portfolio diversification compared to the average investor and various placebo counterfactuals. Our evidence suggests that social networks can provide good advice in settings where individuals are personally connected.