Do Trading Apps Make Investors Trade Too Much?

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TU research survey of 1,350 retail investors finds that trading apps can influence both how often investors check markets and when they decide to trade. 44% say app features sometimes or often make them check investments when they had not intended to, while 38% have made an unplanned trade after seeing a notification, price alert or another app prompt. Price alerts are the most common trigger. Among investors who have made a prompt-related trade, 31% say they later felt they acted too quickly at least sometimes.

Trading apps make investing faster and easier. Prices can be checked instantly, orders can be placed within seconds, and notifications can draw attention to market movements without investors actively searching for them.

These features improve convenience, but they also raise a behavioral question: does easier access simply help investors execute decisions, or can app design create new reasons to trade?

To examine this issue, we surveyed 1,350 retail investors worldwide about app notifications, market checking, unplanned trades and the speed of their investment decisions.

The research aims to answer key questions:

Do trading apps increase market checking?
How often do investors react to notifications?
How many make unplanned trades after an app prompt?
Which features are most likely to trigger a trade?
How quickly do investors act?
Do they later believe they acted too quickly?

Findings

Based on TU research, several patterns emerge:

Trading apps encourage more market checking. 44% say app features sometimes or often make them check investments when they had not intended to.
Notifications regularly bring investors back into trading apps. 41% usually or sometimes open their app soon after receiving a market-related notification.
More than one-third have made an unplanned trade after an app prompt. 38% have bought or sold after seeing a notification, price alert or another app feature despite not planning the trade beforehand.
Price alerts are the most commonly reported trigger. 35% of investors who have made prompt-related trades identify price movement alerts as the main trigger.
Many prompt-related trades happen quickly. 51% of investors who have made these trades typically act within 30 minutes.
Some investors later question the speed of the decision. 31% say they have felt they acted too quickly at least sometimes.

Institutional validation

Institutional research increasingly examines trading apps not only as tools for executing decisions but also as environments that can influence investor behavior.

The UK Financial Conduct Authority tested this directly in its Digital engagement practices: a trading apps experiment. More than 9,000 consumers used an experimental trading platform containing push notifications, flashing prices, trader leaderboards and points linked to a prize draw.

Push notifications increased the number of trades by 11%, while points and prize draws increased trading by 12%. Push notifications also increased the proportion of trades involving risky investments by 8%. Flashing prices and trader leaderboards, however, did not significantly increase the number of trades.

This distinction is important: the evidence does not suggest that every engagement feature automatically increases trading. Different design features can affect behavior differently.

The FCA later examined real customer trading records in Playing the market: a behavioural data analysis of digital engagement practices and investment outcomes.

Users of apps with more digital engagement practices traded more frequently and were more likely to show higher levels of erratic or potentially concerning trading behavior. Returns were significantly worse among users of high-DEP apps, while large losses were 4.8 percentage points more common than among users of low-DEP apps after accounting for demographics. The FCA stresses that these observational results show an association and do not prove that app features caused the poorer outcomes.

The FCA's Multi-firm review of trading apps subsequently emphasized that firms using digital engagement practices should consider whether features exploit behavioral biases and monitor whether they support good customer outcomes.

TU research builds on these findings by examining how this influence plays out in practice: whether app prompts lead investors to check markets, make unplanned trades and later question how quickly they acted.

Theoretical research

The potential influence of trading apps can be understood through limited attention and salience.

Investors face thousands of possible assets but have limited time and attention. Before deciding whether an investment is attractive, they must first notice it.

Barber and Odean examined this mechanism in All That Glitters: The Effect of Attention and News on the Buying Behavior of Individual and Institutional Investors. They found that individual investors were more likely to buy attention-grabbing stocks, including stocks in the news, stocks experiencing unusually high trading volume and stocks showing extreme one-day returns.

Trading apps can create another source of salience. Instead of waiting for investors to search for information, the platform can bring a particular price movement or asset directly to their attention.

Arnold, Pelster and Subrahmanyam tested this mechanism using brokerage push messages in Attention Triggers and Investors' Risk-Taking.

The researchers compared trades following standardized stock push messages with other trades. Their analysis found that “attention trades” carried 19 percentage points more leverage on average than non-attention trades. The effect was stronger among younger and less experienced investors. The median interval between a push message and an attention trade was only 1.35 hours.

This leads to a second relevant concept: reduced decision friction. A notification attracts attention, while the trading interface allows investors to act on that attention almost immediately. Reduced friction can make investing more accessible, but it also shortens the process between noticing an opportunity and executing a trade.

Survey data

To understand whether trading apps influence retail investor behavior, we conducted a proprietary quantitative study examining app engagement, notifications, unplanned trades, behavioral triggers, decision speed and post-trade assessment.

Methodology

The study was conducted using a structured online survey based on the CAWI methodology.

Sample composition: 1,350 retail investors.
Coverage: North America, Europe, Asia, Latin America, Africa, and the Middle East.
Age: 18–60 years old.
Participation criteria: respondents who currently invest or trade through a mobile app.
Statistical confidence: 95%.
Estimated sampling deviation: ±2.8%.

Research team

The study was conducted by our experts:

Anastasiia Chabaniuk (Author, TU research) – research design and interpretation.
Chinmay Soni (Fact-checker) – data validation and statistical verification.
Ciaran Ryan (Editor-in-Chief) – editorial and methodological supervision.
TU research team (Andrey Mastykin, Oleg Tkachenko) – data collection and analysis.

Do trading apps increase market checking?

Respondents were asked how often app features prompt them to check their investments when they had not planned to.

Unplanned market checking caused by trading apps
Frequency	Share
Often	16%
Sometimes	28%
Rarely	24%
Never	27%
Not sure	5%

Insight: 44% say their trading app often or sometimes causes them to check investments unexpectedly. This suggests that apps can affect investor attention even before a trading decision occurs.

How often do investors react to trading notifications?

Respondents were asked what they normally do after receiving a market-related notification.

Typical reaction:

Open the app almost immediately – 17%;
Usually check soon afterward – 24%;
Check depending on the alert – 31%;
Usually ignore it – 19%;
Notifications are disabled – 9%.

Insight: 41% normally open their trading app immediately or relatively soon after a notification, while another 31% respond selectively.

Have investors made an unplanned trade after an app prompt?

Respondents were asked whether they had bought or sold an investment after seeing an app prompt despite not planning the trade beforehand.

Unplanned trading after an app prompt
Response	Share
Yes, several times	14%
Yes, once or twice	24%
Not sure whether the prompt influenced me	18%
No	44%

Insight: 38% have made at least one unplanned trade after an app prompt. Another 18% cannot clearly determine whether the prompt influenced their decision.

Which feature is most likely to trigger an unplanned trade?

Investors who had made an unplanned prompt-related trade were asked which feature was most likely to trigger it.

Main trigger:

Price movement alert – 35%;
“Top movers” or trending assets – 22%;
Breaking market/company news – 17%;
Personalized asset notification – 11%;
Social or popularity indicator – 7%;
Rewards or leaderboards – 4%;
Other – 4%.

Insight: Price alerts are the most commonly reported trigger. Together with “top movers,” the results suggest that features highlighting immediate market movements influence behavior more often than overt game-like features.

How quickly do investors trade after an app prompt?

Respondents who had made a prompt-related trade were asked how quickly they typically acted.

Time between app prompt and trade
Decision time	Share
Within 5 minutes	22%
6–30 minutes	29%
31–60 minutes	17%
Several hours	16%
A day or longer	10%
Cannot remember	6%

Insight: 51% typically act within 30 minutes, including 22% within five minutes. This illustrates how quickly additional attention can become an executed investment decision.

Do investors later think they acted too quickly?

Finally, respondents were asked whether they later felt they had acted too quickly.

Post-trade assessment:

Yes, often – 8%;
Yes, sometimes – 23%;
Rarely – 26%;
Never – 37%;
Not sure – 6%.

Insight: 31% say they have often or sometimes felt they acted too quickly. However, 37% have never felt this way, meaning prompt-related trading does not automatically translate into regret.

Download the full PDF version of the TU research to access additional analysis, detailed survey data, and extended findings from our analytical team. The report includes complete methodology, charts, and behavioral insights referenced throughout the study.

Download PDF version

Practical implications for retail investors

The research suggests that investors may benefit from considering not only what information they receive but also how that information reaches them.

Treat notifications as information, not instructions. A price movement does not necessarily require an immediate response.
Separate monitoring from decision-making. Alerts can be useful without becoming automatic trading triggers.
Review notification settings. Alerts about existing holdings may serve a different purpose from generalized trending-asset prompts.
Pay attention to unplanned trades. Investors can ask what changed between opening the app and placing an order.
Consider a decision delay. A short pause can provide time to check whether a trade fits an existing strategy.
Review trading history. Past activity can show whether notification-driven trades differ from planned decisions.

Trading apps can be useful when they combine convenient execution with a reliable trading environment. For investors comparing platforms, regulation, trading conditions and app functionality are also important factors to consider. Below are trading apps from regulated Forex brokers reviewed by our experts.

Best Forex trading apps
	Trading.com USA	Plus500	OANDA	FOREX.com	IG Markets	Interactive Brokers
Android
iOS
Min. deposit, $	50	100		100	1
Max. leverage	1:50	1:300	1:200	1:50	1:200	1:30
Standard EUR/USD spread	1.1	0.7	0.3	1.0	0.9	0.5
Deposit fee, %
Withdrawal fee, %
Max. Regulation Level	Tier-1	Tier-1	Tier-1	Tier-1	Tier-1	Tier-1
TU overall score	6.88	7.7	6.63	6.47	6.38	6.37
Open an account	Go to broker Your capital is at risk.	Go to broker 81% of retail CFD accounts lose money.	Go to broker Your capital is at risk.	Study review	Study review	Study review

Data sources and methodology

Financial Conduct Authority. Digital engagement practices: a trading apps experiment, Research Note, 2024. Online experiment involving more than 9,000 consumers and four digital engagement practices.
Financial Conduct Authority. Playing the market: a behavioural data analysis of digital engagement practices and investment outcomes, Occasional Paper 66, 2025. Analysis linking investor trading records with credit-file data.
Financial Conduct Authority. Multi-firm review of trading apps: high-level observations, 2025.
Barber, B. M. & Odean, T. All That Glitters: The Effect of Attention and News on the Buying Behavior of Individual and Institutional Investors, The Review of Financial Studies , 21(2), 2008, 785–818.
Arnold, M., Pelster, M. & Subrahmanyam, M. G. Attention Triggers and Investors' Risk-Taking, Journal of Financial Economics , 143(2), 2022, 846–875.
Traders Union. Top Regulated Forex Trading Apps.
Traders Union. Mastering risk management in Forex trading.
Traders Union. Tips for Managing Emotions in Forex Trading.
IdSurvey. CAWI Methodology.

Previous volumes in this series

Conclusion

Trading apps are not just passive tools but active influencers that can prompt investors to check markets and make unplanned trades, often within minutes of receiving a notification. The research shows that price alerts are the most common catalysts, leading 38 percent of retail investors to execute trades they had not originally intended. While these features offer speed and convenience, they can also lead to regret, with nearly a third of investors feeling they sometimes act too quickly. Ultimately, retail investors should treat app notifications as information rather than instructions and deliberately separate the impulse to act from the decision to trade for more thoughtful investment outcomes.

FAQs

What types of trading app features are most likely to prompt unplanned trades?

Price movement alerts and notifications highlighting trending assets are the most common features that prompt unplanned trades. These features draw immediate attention to market changes, leading some investors to buy or sell without prior intention.

How quickly do investors typically react to trading app prompts?

According to survey data, 51% of investors who made prompt-related trades did so within 30 minutes of receiving a notification, with 22% acting within just five minutes. This suggests that app prompts can result in very rapid decision-making.

Do trading apps impact the frequency with which investors check the markets?

Yes, trading apps increase the frequency of market checking. 44% of surveyed investors report that app features sometimes or often cause them to review their investments even when they did not originally plan to do so.

Are there risks associated with reacting quickly to trading app notifications?

Some investors later feel they acted too quickly after responding to app notifications. While 31% report this sentiment at least sometimes, 37% say they never regret their rapid actions. This highlights that not all rapid trades lead to regret, but there is a notable risk of hasty decision-making.

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Team that worked on the article

Anastasiia has 17 years of experience in finance and content marketing. She believes that the support of information and expert opinion is very important for the success of investors and new traders.

Learn about our editorial policies

Ciaran Ryan is a veteran financial journalist based in South Africa, where he covers cryptocurrency, mining, stock markets, and governance for Moneyweb. He also hosts the weekly Moneyweb Crypto Podcast.

Chinmay Soni is a financial analyst with more than 5 years of experience in working with stocks, Forex, derivatives, and other assets. As a founder of a boutique research firm and an active researcher, he covers various industries and fields, providing insights backed by statistical data.

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