Tag: investment behaviour

The renowned behavioural finance research duo, Barber and Odean, published a paper in 2001 entitled Boys will be boys that ruffled a few feathers. The duo studied and reported on the performance difference males versus females generated on their investments. Not only did they find a statistically significant difference in favour of women, but they also found that men had better investment performance in the mere presence of women.

In his previous budget speech, Minister Mboweni mentioned a host of different taxes that the revenue man would soon be collecting from us. From personal income tax, to fuel taxes, corporate and carbon taxes – the list was long. But one tax he didn’t mention – and to his credit it is not an official tax (but I would argue it should be) – is behaviour tax.

A recent study by the Warwick Business School, which analysed the behaviour and returns of 2,800 investors over three years, found that women outperform men by 1.8%. By looking at a range of criteria, the study was able to ascertain a number of significant differences between the genders when it came to their investment behaviour. The behavioural qualities displayed by women investors - many of which are aligned to an outcome-based approach to investing - may explain their superior performance.