Many say men are better investors; they’re not
NEW YORK - Many men and women think men are the better investors. They’re wrong.
After checking how 8 million of its customers did during 2016, Fidelity Investments found that women did better than men by an average of 0.4 percentage points.
The difference in performance is small, and it’s always dangerous to make big generalizations out of small slices of data. But it slots in with other research that suggests women tend to take a longer-term view of investing. They are more likely to buy and hold their investments, and they take fewer risks, for example.
Researchers are generally loathe to declare one gender as absolutely better than the other in investing, and other studies have shown men doing slightly better than women over other periods of time, but the figures underscore that women at least shouldn’t be too pessimistic about their own abilities. That would be a dangerous thing if it discourages them from investing.
“When women actually take the step of investing, they do a good job,” said Kathleen Murphy, president of personal investing at Fidelity. “It doesn’t surprise us, but I think it will surprise them. The issue is: How do we get women to have the confidence in themselves to take care of something that is fundamental to their future well-being?”
To check confidence levels, Fidelity asked pollsters to survey about 1,000 investors early this year and ask whether they thought men or women had the better returns in 2016. Men and women answered roughly the same way. Nearly half of each group thought there would be no difference (49% of men and 47% of women). But among those who guessed that one gender would come out on top, the vast majority said it would be men. Only 9% of women (and 9% of men) said they thought women earned higher returns in 2016.
One of the main reasons for the lack of confidence among women may be the financial services industry itself. It’s one that was created by and, for a long time, run for men.
The disparities run up and down Wall Street. Less than 10% of all U.S. fund managers are women, and the percentage has been on a slow decline since 2008, according to a recent study by Morningstar. Managers attribute much of that to the small percentage of women throughout the financial industry. When relatively few analysts are women, that leaves few potential fund managers.
To better engage with female customers, Fidelity now writes all its promotional materials with an imaginary, 38year-old female customer in mind. Her name is Susie.
“Whether it’s financial planning or saving for retirement or retirement income, we pause and ask if this will meet Susie’s standards,” Murphy said.