Características de los inversores online de alta frecuencia en España

Resumo

This paper studies the traits and characteristics of Spanish high frequency online retail investors, which allow us to analyze their socio-demographic characteristics, portfolio choices, investment strategies, trading patterns and performances and their similarities and differences with other countries. We also analyzed studies carried out in other countries like USA, Japan, Korea, Germany, Italy, Sweden, Finland, Malaysia and UAE. So called high frequency online traders are the focus of our research object. In turn, for its study, we distinguish two subgroups within them, active traders and day and heavy traders. Our study is the first one which makes a true anatomy of these types of investors in Spain, thanks to an Internet survey conducted with more than 250 online investors. According to our results we can describe Spanish online traders according to the following characteristics: men at middle age, married, highly educated, good level of income and wealth, living in rich regions of the country, with a good professional status, with financial expertise. Their portfolios are moderate levels of diversification with Spanish stocks, insurance policies, pension products and pension funds and foreign stocks. They prefer stocks, focused on Spanish Blue Chips, Mid and Small Caps and foreign stocks with moderate to medium level of risk. Derivatives have an important role among high frequency traders in the following order: stock index futures, stock futures, warrants and stock options. Concerning performances, results show, in a significant percentage, that performance is higher than the market and a high dose of optimism about expected returns.