Saturday, April 07, 2018

Is finance gendered ?


Let's imagine a finance seminar for men ( and men only ) that is relevant to you regardless of whether you are an alpha male or a BBFA.

a) It will focus on lifelong learning and address the issue why boys are not doing too well in school compared to women.
b) It will talk about earnings of blue-collar men who are not getting increments based on inflation rates.
c) It will discuss strategies of saving money by bingeing on Netflix, cutting cable and playing computer games all day. Even discuss the most optimal car to own.
d) It will focus on saving more money by eliminating male-dominated vices like smoking or drinking.
e) It will talk about investing on passive income to offset computing gaming expenses and Geylang escapades.
f) It will address men's shorter life-spans and adjust a mix of annuities and term life accordingly.
g) It will consider the prevalence of divorce and update the men on how our courts will rule on matrimonial asset division, custody of children and maintenance of spouse.
h) The tone will be humorous and filled with hours of filthy jokes along with good advice on money management.
i) Goody bags will be filled with condoms, Viagra, Astons vouchers and Tiger beer.

The question is why does such a seminar not exist ?

I think it is because people might find it absurd.

But once we flip that idea for women, this is common business practice and quite a few start-ups are doing quite alright providing financial education for women.

I think investing is not like writing novels. You can write a novel like 50 Shades of Grey that appeal to mainly to women. The financial markets are fairly consistent to male or female investors. While it can be argued that women tend to trade less and are more conservative in outlook, I know of many men who invest like women ( and do quite well for that matter ). Of course, there are also women who buy shit-coins like the most foolish of millenial males.

In my opinion, finance is different beast. SPH does not pay a different dividend to a man as opposed to a woman. One of my most admired financial journalists is Teh Hooi Ling and I try my level best to adapt to her quantitative investment style towards portfolio building.

The decision to segment the population to cater specifically to women is a business decision and not really based on a superior investing model that someone only works when executed by a woman.

It would be good to hear from women why they need a "safe space" to discuss money matters.

It seems like a gender neutral issue to me.




3 comments:

  1. Hello christopher

    Good investing involves a lot of removal of emotional and behaviorial bias to make rational decisions.

    Unfortunately, a lot of people seems to prefer customised or solutions tailored to their specific needs. They understand the impact of behavioral finance but still unable to fully implement it.

    It is more of a personal choice and marketing gimmick than something meaningful. Some prefer heavy quantitative methods, others robo advisors, others prefer a human advisor to tide through the different moods of the stock market.
    To each his own.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Which means that it is not gendered lah !

    ReplyDelete