Background: People nowadays are more concerned about their financial status and how to improve their quality of life; one method is day trading. This study aims to investigate the association between stress or anxiety and day trading among day traders in Saudi Arabia.
Methods: We collected the data through DASS-21, a set of three self-report scales designed to measure the emotional states of depression, anxiety, and stress. It tells if the person has mild, moderate, severe, or extremely severe emotional status. Our study will focus on two domains: stress and anxiety. Day traders scoring between 0 and 7 on the anxiety scale were classified as normal anxiety. Scoring between 8 and 9 on the anxiety scale, mild anxiety, and between 10 and 14 on the anxiety scale as moderate anxiety. Those scoring between 15 and 19 were classified as severe, and those scoring >20 as extremely severe.
Results: Our results showed that out of 387 valid surveys, day traders scoring < 14 on the stress scale were classified as everyday stress (N = 249, 64.3%), and those scoring between 15 and 18 as mild (N = 49, 12.7%) and those scoring between 19 and 25 as moderate (N = 46, 11.9%), those scoring between 26 and 33 as severe (N = 34, 8.8%), and those scoring > 34 were classified as extremely severe (N = 9, 2.3%).
Conclusions: The prevalence of anxiety and stress is considerable among day-traders. Therefore, it is fundamental to develop more effective health promotion strategies for the target population to make them aware of and learn how to control and prevent these harmful emotional feelings.
Keywords: Saudi Arabia; anxiety; day traders; mental health; stress; work stress.