Are women the better investors?

Are women more successful at investing than men? If you believe a study by the Warwick Business School, then the answer is yes. According to the study, women’s investment returns outperform those of men by 1.8 percent per year.

Various research shows that women approach investing differently than men. How do their investment strategies differ? Here are three attempts to explain why female investors can achieve better returns on average.

1. According to the Warwick Business School study, the better performance could be due to the fact that women buy and sell less frequently than men and therefore have lower trading costs. This is because in order to calculate net returns, these sums must be deducted from market performance.
2. Women are more disciplined and show a lower propensity to disposition, according to a study by the online investment management service Nutmeg. This means that they tend to ride out price corrections and stick more closely to their investment strategy, even in volatile financial markets. They are 25 percent less likely than men to sell their investments if they suffer a relative loss of value.
3. According to a UBS report, women do more thorough research before investing, and have more diversified portfolios as a result.