Drawing on recent discussions of relational embeddedness and socio-technical agencement, this thesis analyses the relationship between stock trading and lay investors’ daily lives, including their social relations, activities, events, devices, places, work and ways of thinking. Taiwan’s stock market provides an appropriate location for investigation because of the dominance of lay investors in the market and the high proportion of Taiwan’s adult population who engage in stock trading. The data were obtained from three main sets of sources: in-depth interviews, document analysis and ethnographic observation. I argue that lay market actors are not only framed by the market’s mechanisms, but also by daily-life structures. The Taiwan Stock Exchange, as an electronic, anonymous financial market, has been a challenge to the embeddedness approach due to the absence of direct interaction between the parties to transactions. This study presents another aspect of socio-economic relationships in the market: the role of financial-market activity in wider social interactions. Like taking part in any popular social activity, lay investors’ social ties are maintained and expended by engaging in stock trading. Social relations and stock trading are woven together and form a largely seamless whole, part of lay investors’ daily life. The socio-technical agencements of lay investors contain distinctive features: diversity, bricolage, use of non-professional ‘devices’, action in non-financial places, everyday means of controlling market risk and association with everyday events. The differences between the agencements of lay investors and professional practitioners produce an asymmetry of calculative capabilities between market actors. Superior calculative capabilities tend to give an advantage to professional practitioners in the market, but these strengths are constrained by political and economic factors. This study sheds light on micro social factors, which are comparable with economic, institutional and psychological explanations, in accounting for lay investors’ behaviours in financial markets. The analysis also suggests the compatibility of the three important social science approaches to economic agents: Granovetter’s embeddedness, Zelizer’s relational work and Callon’s agencement.

Submitted by Eduardo Sanchez Palma (edsanpa7@hotmail.com) on 2017-01-17T17:31:17Z No. of bitstreams: 1 17012017 MPA PALMA.pdf: 6332936 bytes, checksum: 491bc558997174d0785b04d3518b6105 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Fabiana da Silva Segura (fabiana.segura@fgv.br) on 2017-01-17T17:35:15Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 17012017 MPA PALMA.pdf: 6332936 bytes, checksum: 491bc558997174d0785b04d3518b6105 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2017-01-17T17:53:34Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 17012017 MPA PALMA.pdf: 6332936 bytes, checksum: 491bc558997174d0785b04d3518b6105 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2017-01-09 / A maioria dos investidores se vê esmagada por uma vasta quantidade de informações, muitas vezes de natureza abstrata. Além disso, o formato padrão utilizado para comunicar os riscos é, geralmente de difícil compreensão e de pouca ajuda na tomada da decisão de investimento, pois a mencionada padronização, raramente leva em consideração os diferentes níveis de conhecimento dos investidores sobre finanças (Sachse, Jungermann, & Belting, 2012, v. 33, p. 438, tradução nossa). Alinhada a isso, a presente pesquisa utiliza questionário baseado na Teoria do Paradigma Psicométrico, para investigar as percepções de risco entre especialistas e investidores leigos sobre seis produtos financeiros. Baseado no elevado conhecimento sobre investimentos que possuem, os Certified Financial Planners foram escolhidos como grupo de controle para comparar as percepções de risco da categoria profissional melhor remunerada no Brasil, qual seja a dos médicos da Grande São Paulo (IBRE, 2009). Testes t para diferença de médias foram feitos para avaliar as percepções entre gêneros e os cinco construtos de risco, respectivamente, relacionados à volatilidade, ao desconhecimento, a desconfiança, a adversidade e as falhas regulatórias; os testes mostraram que são distintas as percepções de risco entre CFPs e médicos, com resultados muitas vezes contrários aos indicados pela literatura, assim como a maior percepção de risco entre as mulheres somente para os construtos relacionados às falhas regulatórias e desconfiança nos consultores de investimento, instituições financeiras e órgãos reguladores. O estudo mostra, ainda, que estão negativamente correlacionadas as percepções do benefício/retorno com os construtos desconfiança e falhas regulatórias somente entre os médicos, e que há diferenças de percepção importantes para o Tesouro Direto e PGBL/VGBL entre as duas categorias profissionais. Dentre os resultados encontrados destacam-se as diferentes percepções de risco sobre os construtos falhas da regulamentação e desconfiança, sugerindo que iniciativas de educação voltadas ao investidor podem não surtir o efeito esperado em razão de serem patrocinadas exatamente por instituições vistas com suspeição pelos investidores. O estudo conclui atribuindo à comunicação o papel determinante do sucesso na relação com o investidor e a necessidade que ela seja construída a partir das percepções de risco e níveis de familiaridade com investimentos dos consumidores. / Most individual investors may be overwhelmed by this vast amount of information and by its abstract nature. Furthermore, this way of informing about risk might be hardly helpful when making a particular investment decision, because this kind of standardized information neglects different levels of experience and financial literacy of the clients (Sachse, Jungermann, & Belting, 2012, v. 33, p. 438). Aware of this, this research paper will use a questionnaire in Psychometric Paradigm Theory to investigate risk perceptions among specialists and lay investors of six financial products. Certified Financial Planners were selected as the control group to assess how risk perceptions of the best-paid category in Brazil, compounded by physicians in São Paulo Metropolis (IBRE, 2009). T Tests about average differences were taken to assess gender perceptions and the five risk constructors associated with volatility, lack of knowledge, mistrust, adversity and regulatory failures; tests showed that risk perceptions are different between CFPs and physicians, with some results contradicting literature, as well as a greater perception of risks among women only to risk constructs related to regulatory failures and mistrust in investment advisors, financial institutions and regulatory bodies. The study also shows that correlations between benefit/return and constructs distrust and regulatory failures are negative only among physicians, and that there are significant perceptual differences about Tesouro Direto and PGBL/VGBL among the two professional categories. Different risk perceptions about the lack of regulation, as well as distrust, suggest that investor education initiatives may not have the expected effect, since they are sponsored by the same institutions of which investors are suspicious. Finally, the study says consumer perceptions of risk and their level of familiarity with investments are crucial, and attributes to communication the role for determining success in the relationship with investors.