Who’s the better investor – women or men?

Lisa Scherzer reports:  According to a new report published Wednesday by Fidelity Investments, on average women investors performed better than men by 40 basis points, or 0.4%, last year. (It sounds like a pittance, but over time, it can add up; as the graphic below shows.) The Fidelity survey compared investing behavior of 8 million retail customers from January to December 2016.

The perhaps not-so-surprising part of Fidelity’s findings is that when asked who they believed made the better investor this past year, just 9% of women thought they would outperform men.

Analyzing gender differences in investing is practically its own field of finance at this point. As each new study attempts to shed light on which characteristics of each gender might lead to better investment outcomes, a few common themes have emerged – and most are reflected in Fidelity’s report.

Evidence shows that women are less self-assured than men—and that to succeed, confidence matters as much as competence. Here’s why, and what to do about it. Confidence gap

Katty Kay and Claire Shipman