Exchange-Traded Funds Seminar
Last night (before coming home to watch Sharpe!) I went to an Australian Stock Exchange free seminar on exchange-traded funds or ETFs at which Ashley Ormond, the author of the book I recced a few posts back, spoke.
I found it rather shocking in one way because, of the 150 or so people present, only about 10 were women and of those, 7 were attending with a man. I kept looking around the room, redoing my count, and I really found it quite hard to believe.
This was a free, entry-level seminar about an investment product suitable for many people, that didn't require much prior knowledge, was held at a nice hotel close to public transport at the reasonably convenient time, especially for city workers, of 6pm, and was advertised in newspapers and online. There were six knowledgeable speakers who were happy to take questions at the end, and three in particular were very engaging and entertaining. One talked about the role of gold in modern investment portfolios and said that when Julius Caeser paid his armies, one ounce of gold would buy a suit of armour, a sword and shield, and a good meal. Today, one ounce of gold will still buy a nice suit, a very nice pen (in place of the sword) and a good meal. (This fails to take into account the fact that the price of gold has risen a lot recently and one ounce wouldn't have bought all that stuff a year ago, but it's true today.) I learned about listed gold securities, financial products based on physical gold. The fact sheet says you can "see" the gold by going to their website for photos, and I found it hilarious that anyone would want to do that, but came home and had a look. Ashley Ormond really got stuck into the high fees charged by managed funds (97% of managed funds fail to beat the average market return over 7 years. "The fund managers should just put all of the money into ETFs and go and play golf."). Pretty good value for the cost of nothing but some time.
Being in such a minority made me want to be Visible As A Woman Present, so I stood up to ask a question about choosing between the available index ETFs, and learned that the ASX200 index fund (made up of the top 200 companies listed on the stock exchange) may offer better returns than the ASX50 fund over time, as medium-sized companies tend to outperform larger companies over the long term as they generally have more room for growth. Then at the end I went over to meet Ashley Ormond, congratulate him on his books and ask whether there were always so few women at these seminars! He said he thought there was a huge untapped market for investment advice for "working females" and some friends of his are working on bringing women out of the woodwork.
According to my CPA magazine, there are now more women than men in the younger ranks of CPAs and more than half of new accounting/business graduates are women, so there has to be a large pool of women out there who are at least comfortable with numbers, although accounting is not personal finance (I think of accounting as more of a trade, like plumbing). When I attend technical accounting seminars (oh joy!), the gender balance is probably never worse than 65/35.
Is it that women have family responsibilities that make it hard for them to be away from home in the evenings? Do women still expect to be taken care of financially? Are they afraid the subject is too difficult? Or are they just not interested? (Which unfortunately translates to, unlikely to live a very comfortable life after they stop working, unless of course some forward-thinking man has been taking care of the subject!)
It occurred to me that if you're a woman interested in meeting men, you might consider free investment seminars as good venues to try. You might even pick up some useful information!
I found it rather shocking in one way because, of the 150 or so people present, only about 10 were women and of those, 7 were attending with a man. I kept looking around the room, redoing my count, and I really found it quite hard to believe.
This was a free, entry-level seminar about an investment product suitable for many people, that didn't require much prior knowledge, was held at a nice hotel close to public transport at the reasonably convenient time, especially for city workers, of 6pm, and was advertised in newspapers and online. There were six knowledgeable speakers who were happy to take questions at the end, and three in particular were very engaging and entertaining. One talked about the role of gold in modern investment portfolios and said that when Julius Caeser paid his armies, one ounce of gold would buy a suit of armour, a sword and shield, and a good meal. Today, one ounce of gold will still buy a nice suit, a very nice pen (in place of the sword) and a good meal. (This fails to take into account the fact that the price of gold has risen a lot recently and one ounce wouldn't have bought all that stuff a year ago, but it's true today.) I learned about listed gold securities, financial products based on physical gold. The fact sheet says you can "see" the gold by going to their website for photos, and I found it hilarious that anyone would want to do that, but came home and had a look. Ashley Ormond really got stuck into the high fees charged by managed funds (97% of managed funds fail to beat the average market return over 7 years. "The fund managers should just put all of the money into ETFs and go and play golf."). Pretty good value for the cost of nothing but some time.
Being in such a minority made me want to be Visible As A Woman Present, so I stood up to ask a question about choosing between the available index ETFs, and learned that the ASX200 index fund (made up of the top 200 companies listed on the stock exchange) may offer better returns than the ASX50 fund over time, as medium-sized companies tend to outperform larger companies over the long term as they generally have more room for growth. Then at the end I went over to meet Ashley Ormond, congratulate him on his books and ask whether there were always so few women at these seminars! He said he thought there was a huge untapped market for investment advice for "working females" and some friends of his are working on bringing women out of the woodwork.
According to my CPA magazine, there are now more women than men in the younger ranks of CPAs and more than half of new accounting/business graduates are women, so there has to be a large pool of women out there who are at least comfortable with numbers, although accounting is not personal finance (I think of accounting as more of a trade, like plumbing). When I attend technical accounting seminars (oh joy!), the gender balance is probably never worse than 65/35.
Is it that women have family responsibilities that make it hard for them to be away from home in the evenings? Do women still expect to be taken care of financially? Are they afraid the subject is too difficult? Or are they just not interested? (Which unfortunately translates to, unlikely to live a very comfortable life after they stop working, unless of course some forward-thinking man has been taking care of the subject!)
It occurred to me that if you're a woman interested in meeting men, you might consider free investment seminars as good venues to try. You might even pick up some useful information!