High-income doctors avoid the stock market because they view financial advisors as the equivalent of untrustworthy quacks.
April 25, 2026
Original Paper
DOCTOR, HEAL THY PORTFOLIO: ASYMMETRIC INFORMATION AND EQUITY MARKET PARTICIPATION AMONG HIGH-INCOME PROFESSIONALS
SSRN · 6582939
The Takeaway
Highly educated professionals like physicians are far less likely to invest in equities than software developers with the same income. They perceive the financial market as a market for lemons where they lack the expertise to distinguish good products from scams. This skepticism is a direct result of their medical training, which emphasizes verified evidence and peer review. Because they cannot verify financial claims with the same rigor they apply to drugs, they choose to stay on the sidelines. This rational fear causes them to miss out on millions of dollars in long-term wealth accumulation.
From the abstract
High-income professionals such as physicians allocate their portfolios as if they face a lemons problem in financial markets. Using the 2022 Survey of Income and Program Participation, I document that physicians hold 52 percent of financial assets in passive retirement accounts and only 9 percent in equity mutual funds-compared to 14 percent for software developers. Decomposing occupational proximity to finance into three channels-formal financial education, coworker exposure, and quantitativedi