- New research by XTB.com reveals the current space of the UK and US trading scenes delving into the habits and motivations of UK and US traders.
- The average UK trader has spent around £17,150.38 since starting with US traders spending around $20,078.62.
- UK females first start trading earlier than males whereas in the US it is males who start at a younger age.
The UK and US are certainly both big players when it comes to trading and investing, and new research by XTB.com1 delves into the similarities and differences between the trading scenes in both countries.
According to our data, the main way traders started their journey was being encouraged to do so by friends and family, at 54% in the UK and 53.8% in the US.
Social media and online content were the second main influence for both parties, with 43.6% of UK traders saying this was how they got started. Social media appears to be slightly less popular in the US, however, with only 38.8% of traders influenced by social media.
Interestingly, while traders in the UK and US both shared similar learning methods, with online content (51.2% UK, 61.2% US) and talking to friends and family (46.2% UK, 41.2% US) the top two – one interesting difference is the third most popular method. 32.3% of UK traders choose to look into successful investors to improve their strategy, while 34.4% of US traders instead prefer to casually follow the stock market to improve.
Of course, trading and investing isn’t cheap, and our research found that the average UK trader has spent around £17,150.38 since starting, with 7.4% having spent over a whopping £100,000. Comparing that with the US, traders have spent a mean of $20,078.62 and were found to be a bit more liberal when it comes to splashing the cash – with 8.4% spending over $100,000.
Taking the data even further, are there any more interesting comparisons to draw after looking at age, gender, and even income?
When it comes to gender, one notable difference is that females in the UK are found to start trading two years earlier than males, at 30 and 32 respectively. Meanwhile across the pond, the average age of US male traders is 30 compared to females at 31.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, there are clear differences between the trading habits of millennial investors (aged 25-34) compared to baby boomers (aged 55-64) in both countries.
In the US, over two in five (42.9%) millennials said that they spent time online learning how to trade compared to less than 10% of older traders. As for the UK, millennials are over twice as likely to look to successful investors in order to learn (29.8%) compared to baby boomers (13.9%)
You might assume that having a higher income could impact the way you approach trading particularly when it comes to taking risks, but is this true? Well, in the UK nearly a quarter of risk-takers were found to fall in the £100,000+ bracket (23.1%); however, this is a slightly different story in the US where only 18.2% of risk-takers sit in the $100,000+ range.
To find out more about the research, head over to XTB’s article: https://www.xtb.com/en/exploring-the-uk-and-us-trading-scenes-how-do-they-differ-kb
