If you show investors exploding confetti animations every time they place a trade, it encourages some to trade more, but others to look down their noses at this gamification strategy.

But if you show those more critical investors that same confetti animation when they’ve increased their portfolio’s diversification, they might look at gamification differently.

A report just released by the Ontario Securities Commission takes a new look at the risks that gamification strategies pose to investors and one of its conclusions is that not all gamification is negative. There can be opportunities to improve investor outcomes through the very techniques which have predominantly been vilified in earlier research.

A previous OSC report from 2022…