WOMEN IN WALL STREET.

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume X, Issue 16, 2 January 1920, Page 7

WOMEN IN WALL STREET.

PETTICOAT PLUNGERS OF NEW YORK. American financial institutions are making special efforts to enrol women among their clients as direct, personal investors in dividend-producing stocksand bonds. An entirely new movement this, due to the extensive distribution of surplus earnings among large classes of the community during thewar. Women, in fact, want to become the financial charge d’affaires in numerous' American households. The American hnan, bent on money-making, is developing a habit of turning his money oyer to his wife to invest for him. He himself does not want the trouble of going to brokerage offices to purchase stocks and bonds, and he is reluctant to take' from business the time. v necessary to make a comparative study of securities.

INVESTMENT HOUSES, . So much a matter of luck,-indeed, is the choice of securities,; anyway, and so little does the average-man know about their good*and bad paints, that friend wife is conceded th heve as much ability as -the. case requires- The wife, in her turn,, is guided by experts' employed by- investment houses, who are specially charged with helping women to safeguard their funds. Tbe National City Bank the largest financial institution in America, has recently opened a beautifully fitted branch at Fifth Avenue and Forty-third-street, in the centre of New York’s fashionable parade, which is largely given over to meeting- the needs of women investors. Women are there assisted to epgags in any. stock exchange transaction which is in the nature of a bona-fide investment and not a speculation. ' Advertisements are beginning to appear in the Fifth-avenue omnibuses inviting women to study various bond issues, and palling their attention to free advice offered by Bond Boston University is the first collegiate institute to rise to the new conditions. It announces the establishment of a coarse in finance for women- ■ A curriculum has been prepared, including not the higher branches of financial-fearn-ing, but one. that is strictly applicable to instruction in such matters as security in investments, safe rates of interest, bond’ and stock values,. ,and general stock exchange transactions. It is now'.becojging quite usual for stock exchange houses to be ruugnp pn the telephone by women .customers., who give orders for.the purchase of live or ten shares of' this of that pre-, ferred stock, on a hundred-pound bond of any of the numerous companies which have recently taken to issuing bonds in small denominations. LOSING THEIR HEADS. But the brokerage firms positively refuse to have any dealings with women who desire to speculate. The experienced brokers say a woman is -to be trusted when she wants to make .a sound investment, but she loses her head when she wants to gamble on the stock exchange. In the latter case women as a class are described as the Worst losers in the world. They always want to win, and when the market goes against them, they- believe they have been robbed. They accuse the brokers of not having advised them to get out of the market in time, and ‘they expect the brokers to make good their losses. Women, too, are said to be incapable of developing caution as speculators. They are never content to take a few pounds’ profit, but want to get rich on a single speculation,' and hold on almost invariably too longBut when the gambling ’ fever is. absent, and women bring into play their, natural conservatism and shrewdness as bargain hunters, the brokers say they make better investors than men because they are more willing to follow the advice of an expert.