Women in Finance Make Better Investments over Long Run

An article in ForbesWoman recently talked about the importance of getting daughters to study maths, in an effort that more women understand investments and work in the financial services. The incentive to do this is to "Raise a Rich Daughter" but also simply because the markets need a greater variety of decision makers when it comes to investments and women's investing style pays off in the long run. The article by Heidi Brown explains that while women hold half of the wealth in the US "only 10% of asset managers are female and recent studies show that, as with other areas of business, women make investment decisions differently from men. They consider contradictory information and study company fundamentals more carefully before investing. Over the long term, funds run by women, who tend to be more risk-averse in general, outperform those of men. The Hedge Fund Research Diversity Index, for example, which has 50% female managers, returned an annual average 8.21% since 2003, while the broader index returned 5.98%."