Are Women Smart Enough to Succeed on Wall Street?

Men generally support the right of women to compete on the Street.

But are they as good at playing the game as men?  Anecdotal evidence would suggest they are not. After all, Fast Money has three male panelists and one woman. The Barron’s Roundtable has a bunch of men and two women.  And this female reporter took three days to rewrite my ground breaking post on quant funds.

Sure, Dagen McDowell beat me in the 2007 mutual fund contest, largely on the strength of Pimco’s Bill Gross. Who, of course, is a man. But a groundbreaking study by British researcher Adrian Furnham is shedding new light on Alpha males around the globe:

Are men smarter than women? No. But they sure think they are. An analysis of some 30 studies by British researcher Adrian Furnham, a professor of psychology at University College London, shows that men and women are fairly equal overall in terms of IQ. But women, it seems, underestimate their own candlepower (and that of women in general), while men overestimate theirs. Newsweek

They call David Faber “The Brain”. He is a smart dude. Kinda like Einstein.

There certainly is a greater male ego. It’s what we call the male hubris and female humility effect. Men are more confident about their IQ. These studies show that on average, women underestimate their IQ scores by about five points while men overestimate their own IQs.

Alpha male James Simons, Employee #1, Renaissance Technologies circa 1982

Since these studies were international in scope, the results were essentially the same whether women were from Argentina, America, Britain, Japan or Zimbabwe. Another factor affecting perception may be distribution of IQ ... Although [men and women] are on average the same, the people at the very top and the very bottom of the IQ bell curve are more likely to be men. That is a pattern that we see in the university setting, with men either being at the very top of the class or at the bottom.

True, there are some dumb men working on Wall Street, mostly at French Banks and FBR. I am highly confident that Michael Milken would agree. And lets face it, Larry Summers is no dummy, but occasionally sticks his foot in his mouth:

But anytime you talk about intelligence and gender, people will have strong feelings about it. Look what happened to [Larry] Summers of Harvard [the former president of the university was lambasted for suggesting that women are underrepresented in the sciences at least partly due to inherent differences in intellectual ability between the sexes]. I just let the data speak for itself. Nonetheless, sometimes I think you have to be stupid, brave or just plain naive to work in this area.

Yeah, blogging about it probably ain’t too smart either. In any case I gotta hop, and buy a little Sandisk from all these women puking it this morning. Its not like any guys would own that pig.

He’s Not as Smart as He Thinks
Newsweek
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The content contained represent the opinions of 1440 Wall Street. This commentary in no way constitutes a solicitation of business or investment advice. It is intended solely for the entertainment of the reader, and the author.

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