MODERN GIRLS

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 55, Issue 233, 16 July 1935, Page 2

MODERN GIRLS

“FORTUNE-HUNTERS” OF 1935. Tens of thousands of women and girls in all parts of Britain are now . getting a new thrill out of life by! using all their spare money to gamble in the share and commodity markets, states a writer in a London journal. They are the fortune-hunters of 1935. They are developing their quaffties of judgment and foresight and turning them into capital. Working girls, especially in Lancashire and Yorkshire, know as much about markets and the significance of the New York cotton close, as do their husbands and brothers. They may have less money to operate with, but the inclination is there. They invariably dabble in the most spectacular commodies and shares. Gilt-edged and slow moving, enough safe, preference shares do not interest them. The rapid growth in the number of outside sharebrokers proves this. The days when women were credited with only enough business ability to look after household accounts have gone for ever. To-day, wives and bachelor girls, many of them with small legacies or hard-earned savings, refuse to allow tlieir money to be invested for them by their menfolk. They usually start dealing in stocks and shares through an outside broker. Commodities, particularly rubber and cotton, seem to make a special appeal to them. With their inborn judgment of what is cheap they realise that in dealing in a commodity they get 100 per cent, of any profit they make. , In shares, of course, a large part of the profit is often put to reserve, and although a man knows that this is essential, a woman is more impatient. If she buys rubber shares when rubber is at 4d a lb., she cannot realise why, when the price goes to 6d, larger dividends are not always paid. So she ignores the shares and buys rubber itself at 4d a lb., trusting that luck will favour her and that she will be clever enough to sell it at 6d a lb.