Research has shown that women are less likely than men to be overconfident in investing.

"In 2001, a survey of financial analysts and investment advisers found that women felt it was much more important than men did to avoid incurring large losses, falling below a target rate of return and acting on incomplete information."
("http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124181915279001967.html")

The WSJ characterized this as being "more realistic." Perhaps because women have had to work more for the money, we're less apt to risk losing it?

The video is, of course, insulting and absurd.

Jaysus H. Christmas, Lisa! Could your "analysis" (read = rant) be more selective and biased?

Is generalization *never* acceptable? Or just with regard to gender? Would you agree that there are MANY MANY MANY more active male investors? Would you agree that this means, perhaps, that men are (1) more comfortable with the game, (2) more established in conventions, whether or not this is actually a positive things, and (3) will tend to be seen as less foreign to advisors because there are more investors that wear polo shirts on casual Friday.

Women have money. Women have (increasing) control over their money. This is new, relatively speaking.

From the perspective of "How do you extract more money from your female clients?" HOW o' HOW is this video anything but positive?

Do you not think there are generalizations and stereotypes at play when you ask, "How do you extract more money from your MALE clients?"

@T - I think it's more because male clients are considered just "clients".

The crazy thing is these are woman in this video, not men!

Wall Street can kiss my illogical female ass!

I'm finding it hard to watch the video in its entirety. I think it's well-intentioned, but it comes across as if they are describing a newly discovered creature. Pulease!

I got so upset (or is that 'emotional') watching this I spat my coffee on my laptop.

People generalize about women in the gym as well, although not necessarily in a negative way. What they say is that women don't push themselves the way men do, but they also don't cheat. Which is to say women may not choose the highest weights they could possibly lift, but they won't jerk the weight up or let it down fast if they are told that is bad for them.

I haven't watched the video yet (I'll wait till I get home) but there are some subtle slams against men in the text blubs (yes, men). Saying that women "triangulate", that is seek out more than one opinion, implies men take the word of an "expert" - the stock broker - without finding out whether other people have different opinions on the stock future prospects. Another way to put that, men are saps.

Also the suggestion that "It's gonna take more to serve her" - meaning that a woman will ask why a stock broker thinks a stock will do well in the future, and will ask follow up questions - again I think the subtle implication is that women are not the saps that men are. Men will agree with a stock broker to avoid looking stupid or inferior. Women may not trust a stock broker just because he is supposed to be smart.

Not that the video isn't sexist or that it is not attempting to show brokers how to manipulate women, I am sure it is. It's just that from the excerpted blurbs, brokers don't think your average male is very smart either.

Of course, your average guy thinks he would look "cool" (and sexually desirable) on a motorcycle or in a convertible.

I thought Bill Clinton invented triangulation.

What a gal!

Despite the occasional grimace-worthy comments, overall it sounds like a pretty useful set of guidelines for marketing or selling to women in ANY industry. As a (male) advertiser/marketer, I'm going to keep it in mind when pitching a female client. If that's sexist, mea culpa.

Hey everyone STOP POSTING AS ANONYMOUS!!!!! Pick a damn name. Anything! There are 40 posts by "anonymous" above... same person? different people? AACK!

That's really mature, Ms. Anonymous. I do find it amusing, though, that you think I'm a misogynist whenever I try to point out another point of view (whether it is my own, or simply another).

approximately 12/11ths of the people commenting on this article need to stfu- probably me included, but that's beside the point. T, whether your point is valid or not, if you were expecting it to be well-received on this website, you were terribly, ridiculously mislead. the name-calling, on the other hand, was completely uncalled for- im sure everybody's with me on that one, at least. so can we please get back to tearing apart the video, not each other?

Well said, Baxter. I'll add my 2 cents: the problem here is not that women are being treated as a demographic -- that is a pretty basic part of a capitalist society (not an innocuous or innocent part, but not out of the ordinary). The problem is that this demographic is seen as "foreign;" "difficult;" "LIKE people;" "special." So THIS is the concern. If they simply gave the advice of how to serve women based on what they know of the average woman customer (she makes an avg of 82,000 per year; she is married; she is professional; she takes longer to decide on a portfolio; she sticks to one once that decision is made... etc) then this would be different. But instead it's: "Well, women are so weird and out of the ordinary scope of our human experience that we need to treat them differently." This video does exactly what Lisa points out: it makes women seem like separate species, inhuman perhaps. That does insult me a a woman. I have no problem with someone learning more about how to serve me, but I do have a problem with someone thinking that serving me is some kind of strange, new encounter.

@T -- I think it is easy for us all to get defensive and that is what is happening.. so I honestly see what you are saying, I am not trying to deny you your opinion, I just think that you are missing something from your analysis --

What we are all so offended by is the fact that this video is explaining how to deal with women in such generalizations, and it is dividing men and women in a way that implies that women cannot be dealt with in the same way as men.

I see your point, and I see the video's point, but they did not do a very good job of not stigmatizing women. "don't treat women like women, treat them like a human"? It should be more like, "don't treat women like they are NOT human", the way that they have it phrased is implying that women are not human, where really, what they are saying is, don't treat women like the stereotypes of women, don't talk down to them, don't try and "charm" her, because these things do not work and they are offensive.

I could not help but be taken aback by the way they were talking about women, but I DO understand that there are some general differences between the way that men and women do business. But because women are new to the game, they are acting like men are the norm without realizing how it is coming across.

I hope this made sense, and I really do understand where you are coming from, T, I just think that you are not seeing that many of us are not trying to disagree with you -- though, some of us are, because, well, we are defensive too. :)

The only thing I was going to say before I got distracted by all the name-calling was that the two pieces of advice that the consultant gives for dealing with women is to:
1. Discover their needs and goals
2. Provide them with information

Um.. aren't they already doing that with ALL of their clients? Do they actually need to be told this?

Or.. is this just another example of a nothing story to fill in the time between commercial breaks?

PERSONALITY TRAITS. All people have 'em, and it has very little to do with what sex organs they have.

Train investment bankers to work with the personality traits of their clients, not a generalization.

I am disheartened by the fact that the reporter and expert were both women, and both presumably intelligent, well-educated women at that. Don't they realise they're just perpetrating the stereotypes which disadvantage them, as well?

This reminds me of an interview that was on NPR a few months ago - some (male) ad exec was talking about how they were learning to "cater to women" by doing things like making power tools look more 'feminine'. I was DYING listening to it but the women who called in to the show thought it was GREAT. Thank you for writing this - I finally got some catharsis reading your words here. :)

@Jamie: I wish I could reply directly to your response, but the reply tree is stupid and does not allow for it.

"Your reasoning is off, Jason. First, men making up 90% of workplace fatalities does not necessarily mean they are riskier than women."
The f
act that men produce more endogenous testosterone than women does, however, mean that most men are going to be more likely to take risks than women.
Biology plays an enormous role in human behavior, obviously: most people prefer to eat foods high in fat and salt because our ancestors for the 3 billion years prior to about 200 years ago (for Western societies; still true for many developing nations) did not have steady nor reliable access to food or large quantities of electrolytes. This gives us cravings for such food and a propensity for gluttony. This does not mean that every human must acquiese to these desires, or even feel them with the same intensity. Similarly, because most men compete against each other (especially for the attention of women), they are going to be more prone to taking risks in the hopes that the rewards pay off exceptionally well in terms of status and wealth.

" It may mean they have more dangerous jobs, are more apt to go out on more dangerous calls, etc. That doesn’t make them risky — it’s the kind of jobs they tend to get and one usually takes the job one can get."

Yes, but there is a reason why men tend to take the more dangerous jobs anyway or do riskier things on the same jobs as women: because men in general are more apt to take risks, especially the sort of men who enjoy and keep jobs in dangerous professions like mining, lumber-extraction, or deep sea fishing. One notices that even though there are women qualified for these jobs, most don't take it because they feel the rewards don't justify the risks. Bellcurves change for the sexes for certain things. This is not surprising or even necessarily undesirable as long as we do not punish outliers on the bellcurves. Men who are very feminine do not deserve punishment for their choices, nor do women who are very masculine. However, it would also be a mistake to ignore biology and ascribe all sex differences to culture and society when some of it is clearly wrong (for instance, men are exceedingly more violent than women by a tremendous degree and women almost never form their own violent coalitions {gangs, armies, paramilitary militias}).

" Second, to reply to mud’s tongue-in-cheek reply of “they’re idiots” with “no more so than the rest of humanity” goes against what you are arguing in your original post. You speak specifically of a particular tendency of men to lose more money and get into more accidents. Mud is trying to point out that your conclusions are as stereotyping of men as the video’s is of women.""

As I said, , it's an accurate statement. It will take me a while (I'm checking my email at work and won't have access to proper sources for 10-12 hours) to get proper sources, but it is the truth that men are more prone to taking risks than women accross all cultures and all times. It is rooted in biology and thus would require systemic and institutional barriers to reduce the efects of such risk-taking (similarly to how one must use systemic and institutional barriers to help prevent people from, say, eating way too much fatty foo).

"but pretend you're treating THEM* like human beings". Typo in the title.

Women who do their research generally know what they want to do, they are less likely to make thoughtless decisions. Women are not more emotional or "difficult" translation being they are less likely to make stupid decisions with their resources. Stick a pair of boobs in front of a man and the chance of him making that riskier move goes up. These companies therefore hate women for that reason...harder to manipulate.