Concerns regarding the assumptions of the Efficient Market Hypothesis have led to a greater emphasis on how the behaviour of different groups of traders might impact the evolution of financial markets; ideas encapsulated in the Adaptive Markets Hypothesis (AMH). A key assumption of the AMH is that the dynamics of competition and natural selection will drive ‘noise traders’, those least likely to push prices to efficient levels because they follow sub-optimal trading strategies, to exit the market. To test the key assumptions of the AMH, survival analysis is employed to examine the behaviour of retail spread-traders, a group who are widely reported to include many noise traders. Analysis of the trades executed by 5,164 individuals in the period 24th March 2006 to 7th February 2012 found that the least profitable and those who adopted ill-disciplined trading strategies tended to cease trading sooner than others. These findings are consistent with the AMH. However, profitable traders were also found to be more likely to cease trading than the average trader and a V-shaped relationship was found between a trader's Sharpe ratio and their likelihood of ceasing to trade (cf. the average trader). Furthermore, during the financial crisis of 2008-09, the disposition effect of traders and the proportion of noise traders increased and throughout the period of the study, the ill-discipline of new generations of traders increased. The results suggest that the forces underpinning the AMH are complex and the move towards market efficiency may not be as straightforward as some expect.

对有效市场假说假设的担忧导致更加强调不同交易者群体的行为可能如何影响金融市场的演变；包含在适应性市场假设 (AMH) 中的想法。AMH 的一个关键假设是，竞争和自然选择的动态将促使“噪音交易者”退出市场，这些交易者最不可能将价格推高至有效水平，因为他们遵循次优交易策略。为了检验 AMH 的关键假设，采用生存分析来检查散户价差交易者的行为，据广泛报道，该群体包括许多噪声交易者。分析 5 执行的交易，2006 年 3 月 24 日至 2012 年 2 月 7 日期间的 164 名个人发现，利润最低和采用纪律不严的交易策略的人往往比其他人更早停止交易。这些发现与 AMH 一致。然而，还发现盈利交易者比普通交易者更有可能停止交易，并且在交易者的夏普比率和他们停止交易的可能性之间发现了 V 形关系（参见普通交易者）。此外，在 2008-09 年的金融危机期间，交易员的处置效应和噪音交易员的比例有所增加，在整个研究期间，新一代交易员的纪律严明程度有所增加。