Plenty of progress has been made over
recent decades on sexual equality in the workplace, but there is one
sector of the economy that stands out as the last great bastion of male
domination. It’s the investing industry.
Recent studies show that only a tiny fraction of mutual funds and hedge funds are managed by women. Fewer than a quarter of Certified Financial Planners
in the US are female, and in most other countries the proportion is
even smaller. Evidence also shows that although men and women tend to
share financial decisions generally, investing decisions specifically are made overwhelmingly by men.
What makes this curious phenomenon all
the more alarming is that, time and again, research has shown that women
make better investors than men — and that includes professional
investors. The seminal study on this subject, conducted by Terrance
Odean and Brad Barber at the University of California, concluded that although men trade 45% more often than women, their average annual risk-adjusted returns are 1.4% smaller.
This does seem odd given that surveys also show that women admit they know less about investing and are less confident making investment decisions than men. So why should this be?
There are probably many contributing
factors. Generally, for example, women tend to be more cautious than
men, and less competitive. Once they’ve thoroughly researched a subject
and decided on a plan of action they’re often better than men are at
sticking to it; and they’re not as likely either to follow the herd.
But for me, it’s during times of market
volatility like these, when individual markets can go up or down by 5%
or more on a single day, that the female approach to investing comes
into its own.
Recent research by the US robo-adviser Betterment
shows that, most of the time, male and female customers actually behave
remarkably similarly. However, women are far more likely than men to
stay the course when volatility strikes. They are 45% less likely than
men to sign into their accounts to check how their funds are performing,
and they change their asset allocation 20% less frequently.
Betterment also found that male customers
were far more prone to “erratic behaviour”. For instance, men were six
times likely than women to dump all their stocks or all their bonds in
one go.
Again, why this should be makes for
fascinating discussion. There are those, for example, who put it down to
biological differences between men and women. A recent international
study showed that increased testosterone levels can cause male traders to become over-confident and take on more risk, especially in stressful and competitive situations.
[...]
Fonte: aqui
Nenhum comentário:
Postar um comentário