Virtual Reality in Financial Trading and Investing: A Review of Literature and Applications

The proliferation of virtual reality (VR) technology is finding new applications in various domains, such as financial trading and investing, where individuals buy and sell financial assets with the intention of increasing their capital gains. The purpose of this review is to summarize the literature and practices regarding the adoption of VR in financial trading and investing. Online searches were conducted to identify studies on the subject; in parallel, an examination of the VR applications for trading and investing was performed. We found convergence when observing that conventional stock trading and investing usually use 2D applications on desktop PC devices. This generates numerous setbacks, predominantly because of poor data visualization due to the limited 2D representation, interaction via mouse and keyboard, poor data presentation capabilities, and restricted support for collaboration among traders and investors. To overcome those setbacks, both academics and practitioners advocate the adoption of an immersive virtual environment for stock trading and investing, in which significant advantages in terms of multidimensional data visualization, data presentation, and user collaboration can be achieved.