We argue that certain currency pairs, similar to stocks, are perceived and employed as gambling opportunities. We define currency pairs with extreme positive daily returns as lotteries. By analyzing data from a popular foreign exchange focused social trading platform, we provide empirical evidence of a U-shaped relationship between previous relative trader performance and the traded lottery share: Traders with bad performance and traders with good performance, in comparison to their peers, are more prone to gamble, i.e. trade a higher monthly share of lotteries. Regarding both sides of the relative performance spectrum, we link our results to well-documented behavioral phenomena. Furthermore, we relate our results to remuneration design features common to social trading, where only outperformers gain visibility and may become eligible for receiving compensation form the platform vendor. In consequence, especially signal providers at the lower end of the performance spectrum are incentivized to gamble; after (repeatedly) performing poorly, traders might be willing to take gambles for a small chance to get a declining account back on track.

我们认为某些货币对，类似于股票，被视为并被用作赌博机会。我们将每日收益极高的货币对定义为彩票。通过分析一个流行的专注于外汇的社交交易平台的数据，我们提供了之前相对交易者表现与交易彩票份额之间存在 U 型关系的经验证据：与同行相比，表现不佳的交易者和表现良好的交易者，更倾向于赌博，即每月交易更高的彩票份额。关于相对性能谱的两侧，我们将我们的结果与记录良好的行为现象联系起来。此外，我们将我们的结果与社交交易常见的薪酬设计特征联系起来，只有表现出色的公司才能获得知名度，并且可能有资格从平台供应商那里获得补偿。因此，尤其是性能频谱低端的信号提供商被激励赌博；在（反复）表现不佳之后，交易者可能愿意赌一把，争取一个小机会，让不断下滑的账户重回正轨。