Invest like a girl

Turns out we're not just the fairer sex. When it comes to investing, a recent study shows we're also smarter. Here's what we're doing right, what we could be doing better and what we can teach the men in our lives: Don't get me wrong. I'm not in favour of always taking the safe road. But after years of writing about women and money, I know that since we live longer, earn less, come out with less after divorce and earn less during retirement, we tend to have a much more conservative approach to investing our money.

But who said being conservative is a bad thing? Not professors Brad Barber and Terrance Odean of the University of California. According to their theory, men are overconfident investors; in their survey, the men traded 45 per cent more than the women did but earned annual net returns that were almost two per cent less. Seems the more the men traded, the more they lost to fees, unlike their more careful female counterparts. The lesson in all of this? Instead of trying to keep pace with those trigger-happy males, we'd make more money if we just followed our financial in-stincts and invested like a girl.

While there's a lot we're doing right, there's nothing wrong with broadening our horizons a little. Guys are still more likely to have a retirement plan—something we could learn from. And they're still more apt to put their savings into growth-oriented investments such as stocks and stock-based mutual funds that tend to outperform everything else on the market.

Overconfidence may not pay off, but a little confidence could. Mistakes happen. It's unrealistic to think that we're always going to be right on every investment decision. (Here, the guys have it over us, since they're so willing to forgive their own mistakes.) When things don't go as we expect, we need to remember we're made of tougher stuff...and that sometimes two X chromosomes are better than one.