Why women tend to outperform men when investing

investmentnews.com - Wall Street is often portrayed as dominated by fast-paced trading and massive risk-taking. But it turns out that qualities like patience, humility and risk aversion can drive better returns over time. It may prove lucrative to remember that women tend to naturally exhibit these qualities.

Over the last few decades, women have made great gains in education and business. In fact, the National Center for Education Statistics shows women now earn 60% of all undergraduate and graduate degrees, and 46% of all MBAs.

When it comes to investing, however, women remain vastly underrepresented. According to a 2015 study by Morningstar, women manage only 8.69% of open-ended stock funds.

On the other hand, female investors tend to consistently outperform. According to the University of California, Berkeley, study, “Boys will be boys: gender, overconfidence and common stock investment” by Brad M. Barber and Terrance Odean published in 2001 — the first of its kind to look at gender and investing — women outperformed their male counterparts by 2.3% over a seven-year period.

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