According to a new study, men are more likely to panic and make dumb decisions.
What it means: An investment app called Stash had a look at how men and women manage their money. Stash is a platform which lets people put their money into lots of financial products, such as stocks (a piece of ownership in a company, which entitles you to some of their profits), bonds (loaning money to a government or company with the idea that it’ll be paid back with interest) and derivatives (basically a bet on whether a good like rice or gold is going to become cheaper or more expensive) with the idea of making a profit.
Stash wanted to know how male and female users acted when the markets went a bit haywire and value of their investments suddenly dropped. They found out that men were 87 percent more likely than women to panic and sell off all their investments while the price was low. Women tended to hold onto the investments, reasoning that the prices would eventually go up again (which they did).
Of course, any attempt to prove that different social groups act in different ways should be taken with a ginormous pinch of salt. There are all sorts of reasons why Stash’s result could be misleading (maybe Stash just happens to be used by loads of particularly flighty men). But it’s a good pushback to sexist ideas about how women can’t handle money or shouldn’t be trusted with important decisions because they’re ‘too emotional’.
