Improving Investment Decisions with Simulated Experience

We apply a new and innovative approach to communicating risks associated with financial products that should support investors in making better investment decisions. In our experiments, participants are able to gain "simulated experience” by random sampling of a previously described return distribution. We find that simulated experience considerably improves participants' understanding of the underlying risk-return profile and prompts them to reconsider their investment decisions and to choose riskier financial products without regretting their higher risk-taking behavior afterwards. This method of experienced-based learning has high potential for being integrated into real-world applications and service

How Persistent are the Effects of Experience Sampling on Investor Behavior?

Investor behavior was shown to be considerably different when the risk-return tradeoff is presented by experience sampling as opposed to a descriptive communication. We analyze the persistency of this difference in a setting in which investors are faced with multiple decisions over time and are consequently able to adjust the risk level they initially chose. For this we use an experimental setting with repeated investment decisions over multiple trading days, and we also test a new form of risk simulation in which wealth paths over time are presented rather than just final outcomes. After investors’ initial decisions, for which we confirm previous findings, we do not find persistent differences of simulation-based learning on investors’ risk-taking behavior. With regards to trading volume, only a simulation in which investors see wealth paths and not only final outcomes leads to lower trading frequency soon after the initial asset allocation

Improving investment decisions with simulated experience

We apply a new and innovative approach to communicating risks associated with financial products that should support investors in making better investment decisions. In our experiments, participants are able to gain "simulated experience" by random sampling of a previously described return distribution. We find that simulated experience considerably improves participants’ understanding of the underlying risk-return profile and prompts them to reconsider their investment decisions and to choose riskier financial products without regretting their higher risk-taking behavior afterwards. This method of experienced-based learning has high potential for being integrated into real-world applications and services

Reduced Cancer Incidence in Huntington's Disease: Analysis in the Registry Study

Background: People with Huntington's disease (HD) have been observed to have lower rates of cancers. Objective: To investigate the relationship between age of onset of HD, CAG repeat length, and cancer diagnosis. Methods: Data were obtained from the European Huntington's disease network REGISTRY study for 6540 subjects. Population cancer incidence was ascertained from the GLOBOCAN database to obtain standardised incidence ratios of cancers in the REGISTRY subjects. Results: 173/6528 HD REGISTRY subjects had had a cancer diagnosis. The age-standardised incidence rate of all cancers in the REGISTRY HD population was 0.26 (CI 0.22-0.30). Individual cancers showed a lower age-standardised incidence rate compared with the control population with prostate and colorectal cancers showing the lowest rates. There was no effect of CAG length on the likelihood of cancer, but a cancer diagnosis within the last year was associated with a greatly increased rate of HD onset (Hazard Ratio 18.94, p < 0.001). Conclusions: Cancer is less common than expected in the HD population, confirming previous reports. However, this does not appear to be related to CAG length in HTT. A recent diagnosis of cancer increases the risk of HD onset at any age, likely due to increased investigation following a cancer diagnosis