Some women love getting little blue Tiffany (TIF) boxes for their birthday or Christmas. It turns out they also like the stock. TD Ameritrade (AMTD) Managing Director, Nicole Sherrod ran the numbers and analyzed the trading trends for TD’s more than six million individual accounts.
While only one third of account holders are women, she found that those lacking a Y chromosome held Tiffany nearly twice as much as their male counterparts. Sherrod says it’s not surprising that TD’s “she-traders” focus on consumer discretionary stocks given that they are the ones making 80% of the purchasing decisions for their households.
It's the classic buy-what-you-know approach. “A lot of what they’re doing is going out into the marketplace looking for great products for their home, their families, for themselves and then taking that a step further to research those companies,” says Sherrod.
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The second biggest stock women held over men is specialty retailer Chico’s (CHS). Chico’s clothing and accessories target women over the age of 40. Nordstrom (JWN), the popular mall anchor store also saw disproportionate trading from women.
When it comes to making a decision about what stock to buy women tend to be more patient and calculated than men. Once they determine what they want they remain loyal to the investment. “We find that women do commit a little bit more to stocks than men, even from a portfolio allocation perspective. For stocks that they really like, they commit a larger percentage of their portfolio.” Sherrod says women who invest in Tiffany or Nordstrom will allocate about 6% of their portfolio to each stock. Going against modern portfolio theory guidelines.
As for men, they make double the trades and tend to be more broad-based in their equities investments. Spreading the risk out across all sectors. However, there are a couple stocks you can find more men in than woman - Radio Shack (RSH) and The Tile Shop (TTS). Men hold these almost twice as much as women. Sherrod says that doesn’t bother her too much considering both stocks are way down in the last year.
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