Women Sharpen Investment Skills

A decade ago, Bridget A. Macaskill was on the fast track to personal and financial success as the marketing director of a $2-billion-a-year British food company.

But she knew virtually nothing about investing.

“It just wasn’t something I thought much about 10 years ago,” she says. “Any excess money I had went into the bank.”

Today, she is president and chief operating officer of Oppenheimer Management Corp., a large New York-based fund group where she has greatly added to her financial knowledge and taken up the crusade of getting more women investing.

“It’s amazing how many capable, bright and successful women haven’t done anything about putting a financial plan together,” she says. “I initially was very apprehensive about joining Oppenheimer because I didn’t think I could learn about all these financial products.”

Role models, stereotypes and attitudes are changing. But it still appears that women are less active and confident when it comes to investing than men, some recent surveys indicate. Women also appear to be less experienced with mutual funds, even though funds offer several features that many women might find appealing.

Women tend to focus more on goals and achieving the end result, which often makes them more long-term oriented and less impulsive than men, says Macaskill, citing a 1992 Oppenheimer survey on gender differences toward investing.

“Women are more likely to admit they don’t know something and then ask questions,” she says. “And they’re definitely more conservative than men.”

A Shearson Lehman Bros. survey conducted last year arrived at many of the same conclusions. The research showed that women think more about their needs, goals and risk tolerance than men, and are more likely to seek advice, says Shelley Freeman, Shearson’s director of personal financial planning. “Men are more likely to invest impulsively.”

And according to data compiled by the National Assn. of Investment Clubs, women sometimes produce better results than men. The NAIC’s roughly 3,150 all-women clubs averaged a 13.5% annual compounded return through 1992, compared to 13.3% for the approximately 2,250 all-male clubs.

Those results span a period of nine years, four months--the average life for both the men’s and women’s clubs.

“What we find is that the women read the material right off, admit it when they don’t know something, then learn it,” says Thomas E. O’Hara, chairman of the Royal Oak, Mich.-based organization.

Men, by contrast, are initially more prone to “act on tips and rumors, lose their shirts, then start to take their studies more seriously,” he says.

In other words, women investors often get a performance jump on their male counterparts, but over time results for the two groups tend to converge, O’Hara says.

In the Shearson survey, 48% of the women polled said they own at least one mutual fund, compared to 63% of men. Mutual funds ranked third among women’s financial holdings behind certificates of deposit (56%) and municipal bonds (51%). But the 15-percentage-point fund gap was the widest for any investment category.

Several characteristics of mutual funds make them appropriate for less-experienced investors. According to Macaskill, these include professional management, high liquidity (the ability to access money quickly) and a range of shareholder services, including automatic investment programs.

Women should also take advantage of individual retirement accounts, advises Michelle A. Smith, managing director of the Mutual Fund Education Alliance, a Kansas City-based marketing group for no-load companies.

Most fund families will allow IRA investments in small monthly increments--a key point for anyone without much disposable income. A $2,000 yearly IRA contribution can be accomplished in 12 monthly installments of $167 each, Smith notes.

Macaskill encourages inexperienced investors to get started. Her company offers a free “Women & Investing” booklet (800-892-4442) that covers some of the basics.

For $17.50, the Mutual Fund Education Alliance sells a helpful booklet and audio tape investing kit (816-471-1454) for novices who want to buy no-load funds.

But for people who are unwilling to educate themselves about investing, Macaskill suggests dealing with a good broker or financial planner.

“Faced with having to take a financial course or read a book, some people will view that as an excuse to do nothing,” she says.

Women place a high value on establishing trust and a comfort level when working with a financial adviser, and they’re not likely to respond to cold calls or other telephone solicitations, Macaskill says. She recommends dealing with a professional who is willing to take the time to build a relationship without a lot of hype.

Men, Women and Investing Some results from a 1992 survey conducted by Oppenheimer Management Corp.: Percentage of people who agreed that they weren’t really sure how a mutual fund works: Men 50% Women 62% Percentage who said most other people know more about investing than they do. Men 24% Women 30% Percentage who correctly identified that, among major financial-asset categories, stocks have gone up the most over the last 30 years. Men 47% Women 31% Percentage who were able to cite the previous day’s close of the Dow Jones industrial average, within 100 points. Men 21% Women 6% Percentage who had ever bought a stock or bond mutual fund (asked of those who had purchased some type of securities before). Men 54% Women 41% Percentage who believed that stockbrokers and financial planners treat women with as much respect as men. Men 24% Women 27% Percentage who said they would be willing to risk $1,000 if the odds were 50-50 that they would either double it in a year or lose $500. Men 29% Women 18%