Why Women Are Better Investors

Why Women Are Better Investors Your MoneyWatch Jill Schlesinger: Beth Frazier always had a hunch that women made better investors than men. Beth Frazier: We don’t have enough time to trade as frequently so we tend to leave our money in there and then it grows over time. Jill: And now it turns out she’s right women do fair better and it’s because they trade less and that means big savings on transaction fees. Brad Barber: Men are more prone to over confidence than women so they you know tend to trade more aggressively as a result of that. Jill: Brad Barber has studied the trading habits of men and women. Among the 35,00 households he surveyed Barber says over confidence led men to trade 45% more often while women tended to stay the course. Brad: Women are more likely to reflect on the information than men are and are therefore less likely to act on it and less spontaneous that way. Jill: Researchers at Stanford are trying to determine whether women react differently due to cultural or biological reasons one thing for sure we can all learn something from the women’s survey by following three simple rules. One, trade less often, more trades means lower returns. Two, hot investments are harmful, don’t react to today’s buzz. Ignore short term market movements and only rebalance your diversified portfolio annually biannually or quarterly and three, keep it simple as a general rule of thumb the more complex your portfolio the lower the return. Easy strategies that Beth and her fellow investors always follow for CBS News I’m Jill Schlesinger CBS MoneyWatch.com