The environment in which people make investments is changing substantially. Digitization made financial investing easily accessible to anyone with internet access and some disposable capital. Online investing is often facilitated by social media, where the information of peer top performers can be widely accessible and distributed. We investigate the impact of upward social comparison on risk taking, trading activity and investor satisfaction using a tailored experiment with 807 experienced retail investors. We find that investors presented with an upward social comparison take more risk and trade more actively, and they report significantly lower satisfaction with their own performance. Our findings demonstrate the pitfalls of modern and growing in popularity digital investment platforms with peer information and social trading. The widespread implications of this study also provide guidelines for improving retail investor satisfaction and protection.