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When I first started this blog, one of my mentors (a man) told me, “you’re going to have a huge disadvantage writing a finance blog as a woman. No man will ever read it.” (Millions of views and tens of thousands of subscribers later—half of which are men—he’s been proven wrong)
In engineering school, I was outnumbered 8 to 100 as a woman by my male classmates.
And finally, at work, there were two male bathrooms for every female bathroom to accommodate the high male-to-female ratio in my field.
Women still earn 80 cents for every dollar a man makes. And because we have the disadvantage of a ticking biological clock and having to drop out of the workforce to take care of children, we lose out even more on earnings, raises, and promotions.
There is, however, one area that woman have been proven to excel over men:
Investing.
In fact, when it comes to investing, despite having less confidence about our investing abilities, women’s portfolios tend to outperform a man’s portfolio over the long term.
According to a study at the University of California, women outperformed men by 1% per year when it comes to investing. That may not sound like a lot, but over 30 years, a $1,000,000 portfolio compounding at 6% versus 7% amounts to over $1,868,764!
Why is this?
Well, here are the reasons why woman are better investors than men:
Women don’t treat investing like a dick-waving contest
Higher levels of testosterone tend to make men feel invincible and take outsized risks. It’s also what causes them to compete against one another, in ever more obnoxious dick-waving contests until they lose their shirt.
Wall Street is full of slicked haired Gordon Gecko types, who brag about how their picks are beating the market.
When, in fact, one of the most successful investors of all time is a woman named “Geraldine Weiss“.
You probably never heard of her, but she ran a financial newsletter with stock recommendations that, over the course of 30 years, delivered returns of +11.2% and beating the S&P 500 returns of 9.8%. She did this not by betting on the next hot stock, but by having strict rules like requiring a dividend grow rate of more than 10% over 12 years, and only picking companies that traded less than 20 times their earnings, with debt less than 50% of market cap.
She’s like a female Warren Buffett, yet most of us have never head of her because she prefers to live a quiet life away from the spotlight.
Because women don’t feel the need to “one up” one another by taking riskier and riskier beats, we tend to invest for the long term and only take calculated risks.
GameStop, Bitcoin, weed stocks. Our inbox is full of emails pitching us these speculative “investments.” The one common denominator? They’re always written by men. I’ve never heard a woman say “Yo, you’ve got to buy GameStop or you’re missing out!” Nor have I ever heard a woman brag about how much she made with Bitcoin or how “boring” index investing is.
Women don’t confuse gambling with investing. When it comes to investing, boring is good.
Women don’t dance in and out of the market as often
Researchers at Cal-Berkeley analyzed the investments of over 35,000 households from February 1991 to January 1997 and found that men traded 45% more frequently than women.
This study was aptly titled “Boys Will Be Boys: Gender, Overconfidence, and Common Stock Investment”.
The less you dance in and out of the market, the higher your returns. That’s why our net worth grew from $1 million to $1.7 Million, despite travelling the world and not having a job for the past 6 years. Had I freaked out and sold everything during market dips in 2008, 2015, and March of 2020, I would’ve missed out the massive gains that followed. When it comes to buy and hold strategy and long-term investing, the less frequently you trade, the better your returns.
By staying invested instead of frequently trading, women tend to outperform men in the long term.
Women don’t confuse luck with skill.
Seasoned investors know you can’t predict what the market is going to do daily. We’re in it for the long game. Any short term gains are attributed to luck rather than skill.
However, psychological studies have shown that men are more likely to attribute their success to their own skill, whereas women tend to attribute it to luck. This leads them to feel the urge to buy more in a bull market and sell at a loss in a bear market. They think they can control the outcome but, in reality, it just causes them to buy high and sell low. When you are overconfident in your abilities, you tend to think you need to “do” something because you have the skill to predict the market. Rather than the correct thing to do, which is to buy and hold.
Because women tend to attribute their investment gains to luck rather than skill, they don’t fall for the “illusion of control”.
In addition to University of California’s findings, the Warwick Business School found that, out of 2456 investors, the females in the group outperformed the males by 1.2% per year. Fidelity also conducted another study which found women achieved higher returns and had better savings rates amongst the 8 million investment accounts reviewed.
Obviously, these findings don’t represent every woman or man (or those who don’t find identify with either camp). There are always exceptions to the rule. There are women who treat investing like a dick clit-waving contest and men who are cautious.
But when it comes to the stereotype that men are better investors than woman, statistics have proven this simply isn’t true. It’s just that we are less confident about our abilities. Paradoxically, our results tend to be better. And even on that front, there’s good news. Over time, our confidence in our investing abilities grow as we age. According to Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA), 46% of millennial women are confident enough to manage their own investments while 54% of baby boomers do.
So, if you’re a woman and cautious and nervous about investing, don’t be discouraged. Who cares if you don’t know the first thing about options trading? You don’t need to. Remember, slow and steady wins the race. Be the tortoise, not the hare. Your cautiousness is a feature not a bug. If you haven’t already started investing, go to our investment workshop and get started for free.
What do you think? Do you think women make better investors than men? And if you don’t identify with either, what’s your investment style and has it helped or hurt you?
Update: To all the men in the comments who are offended by this post, I offer the following response.
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I love this post!! So down right accurate.
My guess, based on intuition with no supporting data, is basically in agreement with this posting. Men will skew their average down by doing stupid investments, while women might skew the average down by not investing at all. The end result being that the stupid mens investments are more negative than the women not investing at all…
…which reminds me, I’ve cashed out all my index funds in all my IRAs and 401K, and am planning on putting a third into Shiba-Inu and another third into Doge-Coin. Does anyone have any hot tips as to where I should put the rest ?
Anything with a PE ratio over 300, like TSLA, which is up over 5% + today .
I’ve heard good things about Go Curry Cracker Coin (GCCC), although that train may have left the station – https://www.gocurrycracker.com/go-curry-cracker-coin/
Awesome read! Thank you. Reconfirmed my thoughts of not jumping in and out of investments. Need to for sure hold some for the long term.
To add to my reply.
I hope things are changing for the younger generations because talking to people in my age range (50’s and older). Its very disheartening talking to these folks about investing.
When I ask people I know where their money is and what is it doing for them many are unaware. They know that they are contributing to a company investment fund or giving money to an advisor but don’t know what it’s invested in or how much they’ve made . this goes for those that identify as female and male genders I’ve talked to.
My big question is why are we still not teaching those in the school system about finances, stock market and investing etc.?
Always love your articles, keep up the great work. I live reading people’s responses as well. I don’t find the article is high on the males bashing. It gets your attention, keeps your attention to get the important parts across as well. On that note I am now going to look into Geraldine Weiss. Thanks again
@Firecracker, isn’t this article a little disingenuous? I thought in your book you said that Wanderer convinced you not to sell in the panic of the market drop in 2008?
My point is not that I’m better than Wanderer at investing. My point is that long term investing beats dancing in and out of the market, which according to the Cal-Berkeley study, men tend to do 45% more than women.
You might redo your math in your opening.
$1,000,000 compounded at 6% for 30 years is $5,743,491.
$1,000,000 compounded at 7% for 30 years is $7,612,255.
Difference is $1,868,764 (not $70,000!).
Compound math is the basis of all investing and everyone should learn it. Einstein did and is quoted: “Compound interest is the eighth wonder of the world. He who understands it, earns it … he who doesn’t … pays it.”
Yes, you are right. There was a bug in my excel formula. Number has been corrected. Thanks.
Cringe-worthy level of man-hating going on in this article. Seems really unnecessary and beneath you.
@Jim M. I’d love to learn more about where you think she is wrong.
Dear Trevor, I did not question any statistics from the studies she quotes. Im sure those numbers are accurate. I would venture to guess there’s probably a study or two that could be cherry-picked to show a group of men’s investments outperforming by a percent. And maybe not. That’s fine. My criticism is of the tone. I can only imagine the reaction if an article was to reduce all women to whatever the female equivalent of a dick swinging contest was. I just think there are better ways to demonstrate that its best to buy and hold index funds. Not to mention in “Quit Like a Millionaire”, she says she had her finger over the sell button when Bryce talked her out of it. Im a fan and will continue to be a fan. I was just disappointed in the tone of this one.
“My criticism is of the tone. I can only imagine the reaction if an article was to reduce all women to whatever the female equivalent of a dick swinging contest was.”
–> I specifically said, “There are always exceptions to the rule. There are women who treat investing like a dick clit-waving contest and men who are cautious.”
The point of the article is not to man-hate. The point of the article was to argue against the stereotype that women are bad at investing.
I’m so sick of articles that say “why men are better at xyz than women” and “why women are better at xyz than men”. Stop comparing yourself to the opposite gender and caring about whether you are better than them and just take care of your own self.
As a trans woman I find this post to be offensive
If you don’t identify with either camp (as I said in the article), feel free to educate us on your investing style.
I think it’s hard to draw such conclusions because women still aren’t encouraged to become wealthy, or pursue traditional male-dominated careers that pay well, the way men are. I’m a Gen X woman and most of my female peers seem content to leave financial matters to the men in their lives. Thankfully, it seems the FIRE movement is helping to change things for the better in the younger generations. I do think that temperamentally, women in general are more cautious and humble than men, so they’re less likely to pursue “hot stocks,” which helps them be successful – as long as they do take charge of their financial lives, which too many still don’t. Thanks for not shying away from risky topics 😄
Yup, that’s exactly it. Hopefully this will encourage more women to stop being afraid of investing and finances.
Haha. Risky topics. Yup, I knew there was going to be a lot of “getting offended” reactions at this. But I don’t care. If it gets more women to invest, my job is done.
very Trump-like. end justifies means, just say anything to get a certain intended outcome and group to respond, regardless of tone or fact
The generalizations are so cliché. “Men are better at this, women are better at that…” Even the title reads like an article that you’d find on a clickbait website.
It isn’t what I expected to find here.
The ability to do a certain task is determined by the individual not their sex, creed, sexual preference or whatever arbitrary trait.
I like both of you guys but I’d suggest staying away from populist identity politics. This type of writing seriously puts your credibility in question.
It’s not a generalization. It’s based on studies that have disproven the stereotype that men are better at investing than women.
I’m trying to get more women to invest, not hate on men. As I explicitly said, there are always exceptions to the rule, not all men are risk taking and not all women are cautious. I simply find it interesting that the studies show the opposite of what you would expect.
To everyone so offended by the allegedly man-hating tone of the article that supposedly says that all men are inferior investors to all women (despite explicitly stating otherwise), please un-clutch your pearls and unclench your anuses.
Sincerely,
ARB—Angry Retail Banker
See, you get it 😉 That’s ok, I’m used to all the pearl-clutching. If we don’t get someone yelling at us every now and then, what’s the point of a revolution? It would just be FIRECracker saying obvious things that everyone already knows and agrees with. BORING!
Best reply so far. I won’t bother to read the rest.
FC has pointed out studies that women receive better returns because they’re better investors. She also explained why they received better returns.
Your choices are to figure out how you can improve, or stay with your pearls and anuses clutched and your poorer returns.
Personally I found this article to be crude and stereotyping. If you look at the Forbes 400 list I think you will find plenty of men who are successful at intelligent investing.
Wow, men being successful at investing. Never heard of that before. Did you know that most of the traders in Wall Street are men too? SHOCKING!
Steve, my point is not that men are bad at investing or trying to hate on men. My point is to try to get more women investing and believing in their abilities. C’mon, we are already outnumbered in STEM and earnings, just give us this one ok?
I thought men and women were equal? Are you saying they are different?
Apparently not when it comes to investing, according to the studies.
Interesting! I wonder what other ways men and women are unequal.
I read the article and thought neat, cool. Then went to comments section, there is a gender politics going on and I’m like whattttt. I’m a man, and I’m not feeling anything from this article, should I be feeling something?
You are clearly of the logical and not emotional camp then. Some people can’t see past emotions to the stats. Glad you’re not one of them 🙂
haha me too, weird comments in here! I’m ok being a man on the good side of the average. I mean as a buy and hold trader…
While reading this I thought: “Offended men coming in in 3, 2, 1 …” 😀
Love your article, FIREcracker!
Sincerely,
a woman
HA HA. Getting people mad at me and offended is kinda my thing. As long as this article gets more women to invest I don’t care.
Love your last picture at the end of the article, it is priceless !! That’s a meme that deserves to go viral.
Disclaimer: I am trying to follow logic regarding how “you can’t argue with statistics” as you and others have mentioned above. The following example shows the dangerous road you are so loudly supporting…….
So logically the same can be said by statistical evidence showing that black American men are more likely to murder someone? 13% of the US population, but responsible for quarter of the murders.
So all the neofeminists what draw what conclusions here? It’s identity politics after all, right? As long as you have some stats it’s all fair, as you say.
Among female investors, brunettes with green eyes born under the Pisces sign are best, as studies have shown.
BS
Funny post, and it has some truth to it, as testosterone literally leads to that behavior. In fact, even in the Olympics they ban some women with high testosterone from certain events, as it leads to an advantage.
BUT, many women completely avoid investing, and waste money and get ripped-off by this Kylie type lifestyle marketing/brainwashing. https://www.instagram.com/p/CR5MEO9nF63/
Wow. Identity politics. Yawn. Gender wage gap is consistently calculated on a very limited range of factors, missing so many nuances. I consume twice the calories my wife does (and I am skinny!), and I have consistently paid more in car and life insurance my whole adult life. Add to that I will live 4 years less. Females are waaaay under represented in workplace casualties, and are nearly nonexistent in the world’s most hazardous jobs. But hey, these facts don’t fit the narrative, so who cares, not the woke crowd, that’s for sure. My wife (female, just to be clear in this day and age) has consistently had an equal (if uninterested) voice in our portfolio composition. We buy and hold. No market timing here. I am so sick and tired of wokeness and prejudice that is so prolific and accepted against men (particularly whites). I used to come here for cool personal finance stuff, but like everything else, this dissolves into divisive anti (white) man rhetoric.
Do you always get offended by facts? Did you require a trigger warning?
I take offence to stereotyping, not facts. Nice try with your little canned comment. Sorry, forgot the #1 rule of wokeness:. Only women, LGBTQ, and minorities are allowed to take egregious offence to everything and defend themselves. Men are only allowed to apologize.
It seems you want the author to be ‘woke’ so as not to offend you! Maybe you need to man up a bit and not be offended like a little snowflake.
…and your done! You have descended to name-calling, and nothing valid in your response. Thanks for playing!
You were done to begin with. Keep clutching those pearls!
I understand your life experience doesn’t make this article relevant to you. Don’t be mistaken though, that this article is very relevant to other people with other life experiences. The article is not a poke at “gender politics”. No need to be part of any “woke” crowd, the article speaks to people from many walks of life. Just not to you, and that’s fine.
Nurses experience some of the highest workplace aggression and violence, along with exposure to a multitude of diseases, and this remains a profession dominated by women. Unlike police (who are likewise the most statistically likely to abuse those weaker than them), they are left with very little to defend themselves with and are often bulldogged into not reporting violence against them.
I think more women need to receive the message behind this article.
Well said… And to post an article about being better %1.2 over the course of a lifetime really doesn’t matter in general terms. If Wanderer came out and said females are better %10 of the time then make the point…I beg to differ when it comes down to this sort of identity politics etc. because “stats” say “this” and “stats” say “that.” Who cares, stay away from this bs gender talk.
If you were paying attention you would see that I am identifying an issue with stereotyping, not facts. Keep up, eh?
LOL violin
Love this post and your intentions behind it. The men showing up in the comments with serious LDE were just a cherry on top. Thank you.
As a women that worked in Finance for 10 years, I just loved this post. Everyone can be good at investing and stereotypes just don’t do us any good. Thank you for helping me and my family navigate investments in Canada (I’m a new comer) and for giving me an extra boost of confidence with this posting. You rock!
IF the point of this article is that ‘long term investing beats dancing in and out of the market’, that could have very well been conveyed without crafting it in a manner that compares the investing capabilities across genders, and how their private parts swing. This investing principle is gender-proof. Including data to reflect that women usually rely on long-term investing, compared to men would have been perfectly fine. Also, note that there are many cases where there are men behind successful, passive women investors too…and those men follow the same long-term investing methodology…ie they don’t rely on dick-waving.
But when it comes to the stereotype that men are better investors than woman, statistics have proven this simply isn’t true. It’s just that we are less confident about our abilities. Paradoxically, our results tend to be better. And even on that front, there’s good news. Over time, our confidence in our investing abilities grow as we age. According to Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA), 46% of millennial women are confident enough to manage their own investments while 54% of baby boomers do.
———
No, I think both men and women in general suck when it comes to investing. Lots of dick and clit waving going on (by the way, thanks to all the dick and clit wavers for the show). Let’s be honest here. Most people in general are dumbasses when it comes to investing. Then, there are the special few who are good at it but the dumbasses don’t pay attention to those special few as they are waving (and stroking) their dicks and clits spurting their juices all over the place.
I worked in banking for 23 years. Trust me. Your gender has nothing to do with your investing prowess. The clients I witnessed were enough proof of that.
Sending lots of love to FIRECracker. Thanks so much for putting into words everything about the topic in just one article. Seriously, your style, message and your research on the topic rock. Super encouraging, empowering, and accurate.
Great post. There is plenty of data to back this up, and I agree with your overall point that women are underrepresented in investing and lack confidence, even when their returns show otherwise. I’ve read something similar about active stock traders, too – there was an article written by a man who trained traders on Wall Street for 20+ years who made the same argument: women were underrepresented in the profession but the ones who stuck it out had better returns than most of the male traders at his firm. Wish I could find the link for it…
Haha, you had me at “women don’t treat investing like a dick waving contest”
There’s on old saying that goes something like this, “The stock market is a mechanism whereby money is transferred from the impatient to the patient.” And, in a general sense, men tend to be more impatient than do women. It is not surprising to me at all that women outperform men when it comes to investing. Now, what’s a man to do? Learn from this to counteract your natural tendencies to want instant gratification. The stock market is all about investing over years and decades as your wealth slowly, but surely, builds up. There are no home runs, fist pumps and adrenaline fueled celebrations in this game. It is not a sport. It is not gambling. It is something entirely different. Accept this, or you will lose money.
The article makes a lot of sense. There are clearly things that men and women are each better at (in general, with exceptions for outliers). Being more timid and consistent in your investments can certainly be a feature not a bug. Encouraging women to invest is a valid goal, hopefully you succeed.
The article does have a bit of a negative tone towards men. If we accept there are differences between men and women, we need to accept they are true in both directions. Stereotypes can be negative because they can cause us to make assumptions about people rather than judging each on their own merits. But, many of them are based on truth just like the ones you used in your article. I would like to see us (as a society) be consistent how we treat them. Right now, stereotypes that are positive towards women and minorities are accepted while those the other way are condemned. We should be consistent.
This is so true! DH gambles his “investments” in Robinhood buying and selling whenever the urge strikes. Luckily for us, I’m CFO ofr our house and manage all our long term investments!
I’m a guy and find the gist of the post to be mostly true. Men definitely lean towards risk and gambling and are more likely to take chances. They probably skew on both ends of the investor scale where women do better on average. The problem I see with my own daughter and her friends is that it is much harder to get them interested in investing and their own financial future. I gave JL Collins book to my sons and they had it read in a day or two and passed it around among their friends. It is now sitting on my daughters desk for 12 months and remains unread.
Its great to encourage women to invest and show that they are naturally inclined to be successful at it. That would be a great article. You just dont need to use disparaging insulting language towards men in order to do that. Because its not being edgy or tackling a hot topic. Its just being mean. And mean people suck (and i dont think thats you). Just a little friendly advice, if you are open to it.
When I first started this blog, one of my mentors (a man) told me, “you’re going to have a huge disadvantage writing a finance blog as a woman. No man will ever read it.” (Millions of views and tens of thousands of subscribers later—half of which are men—he’s been proven wrong)
———
Let me guess who this mentor is: Garth Turner. Lol. Might the above be a disingenuous statement taken out of context?
As a buy and hold, boring index funds investor who is also male, I love this article. I think the dick-waving analogy is spot-on. I find it funny that so many male posters are offended, arguably proving your point about the dick-waving. I also have a dick, but because I don’t wave it around while investing, I am not offended one bit by this article. I am, however, amused by those fragile men who are offended.
As a guy, I have learned most of everything I know about money and investing from women, including this post.
Not sure if that is something to brag about. Many of us B&D investors learned by tons of reading and consultation with non-commission advisors, and we could care less if they were male or female and whatever other genders they may identify as.
“Women don’t treat investing like a dick-waving contest”
Yeah, not inflammatory, sexist, or discriminatory at all. No one sowing the seeds of divisiveness here! Nothing to see here folks. Just some innocent little statistics….
irony of it all is that for everything they hate about Trump tactics, a longer look in the mirror shows the same approach in their own messaging.
i have no problem if people are at least self aware and don’t condemn it on one hand, while doing the same the other.
I have to disagree with you FireCracker….
Men are better investors in Wall Street because they are less emotional than women on the average.
Women are better investors in Family (Relationship) because they are more emotional than men on the average.
You are just happened to be the “one-off”.
After seeing so many negative comments toward FireCrackers, I can’t help but follow up with another common…
Men – each one of us crawled out of a woman! As a result, it is a futile effort to prove yourself better than women. Cooperation is much better option.
Women – Cooperation is your strength. Proving yourself better than men is counter intuitive and inevitably a time wasting effort.
This article made me cringe. I don’t like oversimplistic generalization regarding men and women, although I agree with all the content about investing in your article.
Men or women. Millenials or boombers. Poor vs rich. Low income earners vs high income earners. White vs black. Americans vs foreigners. All of this doesn’t matter.
The reality of finance is that it is a field that is highly skewed : there are some people that are extremely good at it and there are people that are extremely bad at it. Any statistic that is derived from a skewed population will be meaningless… Hence, there are a plethora of survey that does exactly that and that spread false information about different groups of the population.
Anyway. Congrats on all your achievements. This is really impressive and inspiring !
Keep going no matter what others think. Always do the best for yourself. Wish you the best.
Just to add to my comment…
The reason why finance is skewed is because it is exponential, not linear.
Therefore, when people understand how it works and perform well, the rate of improvement is accelerating more and more along the way.
People who think about finance in linear term will tend to take short term decisions, like day trading. Generating 5-10% return per month might works for a little while, until it doesn’t…
Finally, there are lots of people who are bad at finance and enter into the debt trap. For those people, it’s almost impossible to get out, unless they do an extreme make over of their finances. For people who never get out of the debt trap, you have the exponentiality of finance working against you… Ouch ! 😐
Tone police! So classic. So BS. I find the whole thing with women not having self confidence with money to be interesting and puzzling. I grew up with my dad handing his paycheck to my mom, who made all the decisions. Now, she to this day refuses to learn about investing and pays what I’m sure are absurd fees to a financial advisor, but she taught me some basic good lessons about budget and avoiding debt and whatnot. AND taught me to be self reliant. As a human being and incidentally as a female I’ve always been VERY interested in my own money and am happy we are in the age of the nice, boring index fund… and am happy to say that I am an indexing fiend who manages my own money, runs the household budget, and at least currently makes bank at work. I dig the control of knowing what I’m doing and the situation I’m in and seeing my balances increase (I’m high income now, but I did actually still save when I was a poor grad student as well). Sending the message that being female and doing money is even possible is important, as is setting the example, because so much (in American culture at least) works against that message. Good and useful article!
Excellent Mrs. C., nice to hear you are another women who is very good with your finances !
This is exactly what my message was about. I’ve seen a lots of women who are very good in finance. I’ve also seen men who were incredibly bad at it.
Strangely, people who are good with money tend to think they are not. And I’ve also seen people who are bad at money think they are good.
I think this is related to the “tone-deaf dilemma” in music (psychology), where somebody who is bad at music is not able to “hear” that he / she is bad, while a very good musician can be more critical of his / her own performance because he /she “hears” all the little imperfections inaudible to other people.
In finance, I think people who are good are usually overcompensating, thinking they are doing worse than their peers, until they realize they are in a good position. I’ve not done any formal studies on this. It’s only what I’ve observed from my own experience. And it’s also what occurred to myself.
On the other side, people who don’t care about their finances but think they are doing great (like overspending), generally end up being in a poor position after some time.
I think the genre (men or women), and all other caracteristics, has nothing to do with being good or bad at finances.
Medias like to scare people using different sets of statistics. And this tend to work particularly well in the finance space with those who care about their finances.
All I’m saying : continue what you are doing, you don’t need to care about what others do. We can share information here with each other so we can all get better, no matter if we are men or women.
What a great article! All of us men could really stand to invest a little more like women I guess. Its great to see awesome sites like this one spread the good word of fire! This site and ask the savings guy ( https://www.askthesavingsguy.com/ ) are my favorites hands down. Viva la Fire
Eh I don’t know if women are “better” or “worse” than men at investing, because the entire argument is based on stereotypes and big logical jumps between pieces of data.
For example, women attributing things to luck more than skill can be good *or* bad, depending on the context. This can be good if being lucky is the accurate thing to say. And this can be bad if they’re playing a game where skill is involved (i.e. blaming things on good/bad luck mitigates the learning feedback loop because you’re not going to be incentivized to learn if you misclassify something as bad luck vs. bad skill).
I think the lower volatility of emotions when it comes to money for women gives them a mental advantage. And I think the need to “dick-wave” incentivizes men to eventually converge to the proper actions to make good investment decisions (it also allows them to more fearlessly take more risk and perhaps get a higher return). For example, Warren Buffet was in a very spotty situation when he bought Berkshire since it was bleeding money left and right. The right thing to do would have been to sell the company but he was stubborn and wanted to double down. So he just bought a bunch of profitable companies to offset the losses so much that he eventually became one of the most successful investors of all time.
At the end of the day, without the risk of sounding cliche – I think men/women would make great complementary investing teams. Both have strength/weaknesses that offset each other and I think they’d be able to do checks-and-balances on each other nicely.
My only comment is amongst with each of my individual closest female and long-time friends, they were like me when we were younger….sorta blindly save whenever we could and pay off student debt, buy a home.
Then boom, realizing in our 40’s onward, to be informed about our investments and plan properly. You would be amazed to know these friends who I’ve known for past 4 decades or so… some bought their own homes in their mid-20’s to early 30’s, etc. Then they did other stuff while working full-time: trips, a 2nd vacation home, etc.
Yes, we’re all the same…boomer women. 🙂 I recall laughing with a friend from university over how clueless, naive we were. All we knew was just save some money..while it sat there not properly invested…
My point, women do eventually make clear decisions in their lives and 1 of them is a clear decision if they want children or not. Once that decision is made, the financial path becomes clearer and clearer over time later.