Untangling the relationships in investor networks

The modern world’s complexity is all around us. Take for example the enormous movie industry, the international flight logistics, or the music streaming services. The recent advancement of technology globalized and digitalized our daily routines, making us consumers of social media platforms and producers of constantly growing big data content. Subsequently, complex systems have become a multidisciplinary topic spanning from the protein interactions in biological networks to WWW, electric grids and friendship networks. Understanding the relationships and underlying forces in a complex system is key to understanding the “whys” and the “hows” about the system and as a result explain the behavior or even the success or failure of its individual nodes.

My research

The primary focus of my research is on the social ties in Investor networks and how they determine and drive the financial decision-making. The results and their interpretations will serve as contribution to the financial market regulation and policies, as well as help optimizing capital allocation and establishing fair asset pricing.

In addition, information sources such as social media or word-of-mouth communication play an important role in information diffusion in the network.  Particularly, during the first year of my PhD studies I contributed to the journal paper [1] on the relationship between the geographical distance and the trade timing in the network of Finnish household investors. The results show that the investors who are located closer tend to time their trades more similarly than those who are further apart. In addition, the similarity in age and the same language seem to be important social attributes that enhance the investors’ communication.

What I like the most

My PhD research brings me a broad spectrum of different experiences, such as collaborations with the field experts, international workshops and conferences, technical expertise and constant learning. I like the challenge and the dynamics, and most importantly, contributing to the academic collective knowledge.

[1] Baltakys, K., Baltakienė, M., Kärkkäinen, H., Kanniainen, J., Neighbors matter: Geographical distance and trade timing in the stock market, Finance Research Letters, 2018, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.frl.2018.11.013

Margarita Baltakiene is a doctoral student in the department of Information Technology and Communications in Tampere University. She received a grant from Finnish Foundation for Technology Promotion to study decision making in investor social networks in 2018.