Is Unbiased Financial Advice To Retail Investors Sufficient? Answers from a Large Field Study
70 Pages Posted: 20 May 2011 Last revised: 23 Sep 2011
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Is Unbiased Financial Advice To Retail Investors Sufficient? Answers from a Large Field Study
Is Unbiased Financial Advice to Retail Investors Sufficient? Answers from a Large Field Study
Date Written: September 23, 2011
Abstract
Working with one of the largest brokerages in Germany, we record what happens when unbiased investment advice is offered to a random set of roughly 8,000 of the brokerage’s several hundred thousand active retail customers. We find that investors who most need the financial advice are least likely to obtain it. The investors who do obtain the advice (about 5%), however, hardly follow the advice, and so do not improve their portfolio efficiency much. Overall, our results imply that the mere availability of unbiased financial advice is a necessary but not sufficient condition for benefiting retail investors.
Keywords: retail investors, brokers, financial advice, efficient portfolios
JEL Classification: D14, G11, G24, G28
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation
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