Parallels
From a recent article in The Economic Times.
Forget the daily TV soaps and the regular saas-bahu stuff that did the rounds at kitty parties. The new buzz is the share market. Across regions, women are finding the market more exciting than the soaps. Believe it or not, the housewife’s appetite for equity has increased manifold and she now represents a growing share of retail investors in the market.
“This segment may be small in percentage terms, but in absolute terms, you will be amazed by the number of housewives who trade in the market. It has grown markedly. Over the past three-four years, my women clientele has increased to 500 from about a handful,” says Darshan Mehta, CEO, Anagram Stockbroking. These women are usually housewives or self-employed who have enough time on their hands to dabble with share trading. With live market rates entering the home through electronic media, these savvy investors hook on to business channels for their daily dose of ups and downs in the market. “I swear by CNBC. After my daughter leaves for school, I hook on to the TV and am in continuous touch with my broker,” says a housewife from Chennai.
Agrees Dina Mehta, former president Bombay Stock Exchange and managing director of Asit C Mehta Investment Ltd: “Housewives are getting more attracted towards the share market. In fact, there has been a revolution of sorts in the last few years with more educated housewives dictating the change. Although the number is small, it’s a phenomenon worth recognising. These women utilise their spare time not gossiping but sitting at the brokers’ office and trading shares. Productive use of the precious time, of course.”
From a chronicle on "The South Sea Bubble" by Viscount Erleigh, 1933.
Statesmen forgot their Politics, Lawyers the Bar, Merchants their Traffic, Physicians their Patients, Tradesmen their Shops,Debtors of Quality their Creditors, Divines the Pulpit, and even the Women themselves their Pride and Vanity!
From "The Great Crash 1929" by John Kenneth Galbraith, 1954.
Perhaps the failure to visualize the extent of one’s innocence was especially true of women investors, who by now were entering the market in increasing numbers. (An article in The North American Review in April reported that women had become important players of ‘man’s most exciting capitalistic game’ and that the modern housewife now ‘reads, for instance, that Wright Aero is going up…just as she does that fresh fish is now on the market…’ The author hazarded the guess that success in speculation would do a lot for women’s prestige.) To the typical female plunger the association of Steel was not with a corporation, and certainly not with mines, ships, railroads, blast furnaces, and open hearths. Rather it was with symbols on a tape and lines on a chart and a price that went up. She spoke of Steel with the familiarity of an old friend, when in fact she knew nothing of it whatever. Nor would anyone tell her that she did not know that she did not know. We are a polite and cautious people, and we avoid unpleasantness. Moreover, such advice, so far from accomplishing any result, would only have inspired a feeling of contempt for anyone who lacked the courage and the initiative and the sophistication to see how easily one could become rich. The lady operator had discovered she could be rich. Surely her right to be rich was as good as anyone’s.
Productive use of the precious time?
Forget the daily TV soaps and the regular saas-bahu stuff that did the rounds at kitty parties. The new buzz is the share market. Across regions, women are finding the market more exciting than the soaps. Believe it or not, the housewife’s appetite for equity has increased manifold and she now represents a growing share of retail investors in the market.
“This segment may be small in percentage terms, but in absolute terms, you will be amazed by the number of housewives who trade in the market. It has grown markedly. Over the past three-four years, my women clientele has increased to 500 from about a handful,” says Darshan Mehta, CEO, Anagram Stockbroking. These women are usually housewives or self-employed who have enough time on their hands to dabble with share trading. With live market rates entering the home through electronic media, these savvy investors hook on to business channels for their daily dose of ups and downs in the market. “I swear by CNBC. After my daughter leaves for school, I hook on to the TV and am in continuous touch with my broker,” says a housewife from Chennai.
Agrees Dina Mehta, former president Bombay Stock Exchange and managing director of Asit C Mehta Investment Ltd: “Housewives are getting more attracted towards the share market. In fact, there has been a revolution of sorts in the last few years with more educated housewives dictating the change. Although the number is small, it’s a phenomenon worth recognising. These women utilise their spare time not gossiping but sitting at the brokers’ office and trading shares. Productive use of the precious time, of course.”
From a chronicle on "The South Sea Bubble" by Viscount Erleigh, 1933.
Statesmen forgot their Politics, Lawyers the Bar, Merchants their Traffic, Physicians their Patients, Tradesmen their Shops,Debtors of Quality their Creditors, Divines the Pulpit, and even the Women themselves their Pride and Vanity!
From "The Great Crash 1929" by John Kenneth Galbraith, 1954.
Perhaps the failure to visualize the extent of one’s innocence was especially true of women investors, who by now were entering the market in increasing numbers. (An article in The North American Review in April reported that women had become important players of ‘man’s most exciting capitalistic game’ and that the modern housewife now ‘reads, for instance, that Wright Aero is going up…just as she does that fresh fish is now on the market…’ The author hazarded the guess that success in speculation would do a lot for women’s prestige.) To the typical female plunger the association of Steel was not with a corporation, and certainly not with mines, ships, railroads, blast furnaces, and open hearths. Rather it was with symbols on a tape and lines on a chart and a price that went up. She spoke of Steel with the familiarity of an old friend, when in fact she knew nothing of it whatever. Nor would anyone tell her that she did not know that she did not know. We are a polite and cautious people, and we avoid unpleasantness. Moreover, such advice, so far from accomplishing any result, would only have inspired a feeling of contempt for anyone who lacked the courage and the initiative and the sophistication to see how easily one could become rich. The lady operator had discovered she could be rich. Surely her right to be rich was as good as anyone’s.
Productive use of the precious time?
