Would the global financial crisis (GFC) locusts have devoured Ms X’s superannuation if mature women had done the investments, my best friend from our exclusive girls’ high school days wondered aloud last weekend as we considered the stars.
She pondered if she’d ever be repaid by the fund managers who’d received whopping fees to invest her money, who’d had a feeding frenzy, who – like locusts – had eaten her retirement years, and who indirectly had condemned her to the humiliation of dealing with Centrelink while trying to find employment stacking shelves at the
local Woolies.
Thus, again, my friend wondered, would things have been different if women had decided on asset allocations.
In theory, I said, they would have been. Different, that is. Possibly better. Probably not as bad. During the week, I’d read InvestSmart’s survey, which concluded that female investors were more conservative, risk-averse investors than men and were increasingly cautious in the current market.
Just over 1500 self-directed investors responded: 86 per cent male and 14 per cent female.
Managing director Ron Hodge says this caution could produce more success over the long-term and during fluctuating market conditions.
Hodge was not saying anything new when he commented that cautious investments portfolio building could lead to greater success in a volatile market. “Successful wealth building is all about risk versus reward and history clearly tells us that there are times for being aggressive and times for being cautious. A slower but stable investment process will succeed in the long term over a fast, erratic approach in an unpredictable market,”Hodge says.
“Innate female characteristics such as patience, tenacity and pragmatism are likely to make women better investors over the long term. However, even though their temperaments are actually well suited to investing, interestingly, women are less likely to become investors. If more women were to enter the market it would be interesting to see the profit results in years to come.”
I don’t want to be a Jeremiah, but I don’t hold out much hope for a utopian female-run investing environment (and yes, I know there are a few such funds). My high school friend and I read all the feminist tomes by Simone de Beauvoir, Germaine Greer, Betty Friedan, Gloria Steinem, Kate Millet et al; we sang Helen Reddy’s anthem in numbers too big to ignore – but now she is stacking shelves at Woolies and she’s angry.
So, my inner Jeremiah doubts that the next 30 years will see a cautious, long-term female approach to investing. Give it three years, five at the max, and the young males will be in there, flying way too close to the sun and burning their wings made of other people’s money.
And, like their predecessors, the post-GFC locusts will not repay the years that their high-risk asset allocations
have eaten.
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Please email the editor, Philippa Yelland, at philippa.yelland@morningstar.com.
