Ellevest CEO Sallie Krawcheck is determined to put women in their place -- as the holders of successful investment portfolios. Krawcheck has nearly a decade of experience helping women get a foothold in the stock market. During that time, she learned the truth about negative ideas about investing can harm women in the long run.
According to Krawcheck, women are the real deal when it comes to making investment decisions, and the data is there to prove it. "The research has always said that women are better investors than men, [receive] better risk-adjusted returns than men," she told TheStreet in an exclusive interview.
"There's some research that showed it's 40 basis points a year and you've seen others that show that it's more, but it's a not insignificant number," she says. "And it's been true of women hedge fund managers, women, mutual fund managers, [and] women [as] individual investors."
Why is this? From Krawcheck's perspective, it's all about risk management. "It primarily comes down to women tend to see a plan and they tend to stick to the plan." She also says that women tend to be less reactionary, and when it comes to investing, that's an essential skill.
"Quite honestly, women tend not to panic as much as men do when markets are tough. Women tend not to check their accounts as much. And when you're not checking your accounts as much, you're less likely to feel that itch of 'The markets are doing this, I should do something and save on fees'."
"We have seen that at Ellevest," she tells TheStreet. "During the tough times of the pandemic [and] the tough market of last year and into the first part of this year, we had positive flows every week in our digital offering."
"That was women who had set up recurring deposits into their accounts and just[...] kept them going. [Meanwhile], we [at Ellevest] saw this while[...] mutual funds and ETFs were in significant outflows over the course of the past year or year and a half." Krawcheck likes to think of women as "risk-aware" rather than "risk-averse" -- and when women know the difference, she says, it's that very skill that makes them successful at it.
