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Trading by Professional Traders: An Experiment

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Abstract

We examine how professional traders behave in two financial market experiments; we contrast professional traders’ behavior to that of undergraduate students, the typical experimental subject pool. In our first experiment, both sets of participants trade an asset over multiple periods after receiving private information about its value. Second, participants play the Guessing Game. Finally, they play a novel, individual-level version of the Guessing Game and we collect data on their cognitive abilities, risk preferences, and confidence levels. We find three differences between traders and students: Traders do not generate the price bubbles observed in previous studies with student subjects; traders aggregate private information better; and traders show higher levels of strategic sophistication in the Guessing Game. Rather than reflecting differences in cognitive abilities or other individual characteristics, these results point to the impact of traders’ on-the-job learning and traders’ beliefs about their peers’ strategic sophistication.

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  • Marco Cipriani & Roberta De Filippis & Antonio Guarino & Ryan Kendall, 2020. "Trading by Professional Traders: An Experiment," Staff Reports 939, Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
    • Handle: RePEc:fip:fednsr:88552
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    Cited by:

    1. Cici, Gjergji & Schuster, Philipp & Weishaupt, Franziska, 2024. "Once a trader, always a trader: The role of traders in fund management," CFR Working Papers 24-01, University of Cologne, Centre for Financial Research (CFR).
    2. Marco Angrisani & Marco Cipriani & Antonio Guarino & Ryan Kendall & Julen Zarate-Pina, 2024. "Non-Cognitive Skills at the Time of COVID-19: An Experiment with Professional Traders and Students," Quarterly Journal of Finance (QJF), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 14(02), pages 1-37, June.
    3. Huber, Christoph & König-Kersting, Christian & Marini, Matteo M., 2025. "Experimenting with financial professionals," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 170(C).
    4. Rocco Caferra & Andrea Morone & Piergiuseppe Morone & Paolo Storelli, 2022. "Professional traders’ individual and social preferences under risk: Does group's wealth matter?," Annals of Public and Cooperative Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 93(4), pages 1063-1082, December.
    5. Adam Farago & Martin Holmén & Felix Holzmeister & Michael Kirchler & Michael Razen, 2022. "Cognitive Skills and Economic Preferences in the Fund Industry," The Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 132(645), pages 1737-1764.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    bubbles; experiments; financial markets; information aggregation; professional traders; strategic sophistication;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C93 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Field Experiments
    • G11 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Portfolio Choice; Investment Decisions
    • G14 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Information and Market Efficiency; Event Studies; Insider Trading

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