Women are More Successful Investors Than Men

Posted on June 23, 2014 by Adela Rogers

Marya Stark wites about women’s success in investing.

As the end of the fiscal year reminds us, we should all be looking for ways to contribute to retirement savings and invest wisely. This is also a good time for men, and especially women, to assess their strengths and weaknesses – and for the financial services industry to do more to correct false assumptions about investing.

Data show that women can actually be the sober sex. Women outperform men in personal investing – by a lot. “Boys Will Be Boys: Gender, Overconfidence and Common Stock Investment”, a 2001 study using data from Paine Webber, the brokerage, showed that women earned returns on their investments that are almost 1 per cent more per year than men. Almost no professional investor on Wall Street consistently outperforms by 1 per cent per year.
This is a big deal. While men and women both reduce their returns with trading mistakes, men make 50 per cent more mistakes, and combined with additional trading costs, this means men substantially reduce their returns. These findings were confirmed by a 2010 Vanguard study of 2.7m investors.

It is also worth noting that women’s advantages in investing are not limited to amateurs. Among professional investors, women have outperformed men by an even greater margin.
Trust could be a factor. According to a 2013 study by the American Economics Association, people simply do not trust women with money as much as they trust men. The credibility bar is much higher for women.

The consequences are serious. Because women earn less than men and live longer, women over the age of 65 are 50 per cent more likely to be unable to meet their basic daily needs, according to a study of US Census Department data conducted by Wider Opportunities for Women, a non-profit organisation that focuses on women and workforce issues.

While closing the gap in confidence between men and women is unlikely to happen overnight, ending the stereotype that women are not good at investing is a good place to start. Then men too can benefit, by gaining a better understanding of why they are not as good at investing as they may think.

Mafia in Italy Survives the Financial Crisis

Posted on June 23, 2014 by Adela Rogers

Avvenire.it reports: The prosecutor in Reggio Calabria has mounted operation “‘Ndrangheta banking” focusing on a bank which financed firms in Calabria and Lombardy. While many factories closed, those in Mafia hands grew. Assets totaling 110 million were seized in Naples from accounts that appear to be drug money from Camorra.

Corruption involving companies, administrators and politicians confirms the Mafia’s ability to infiltrate the construction business. Fifty-five companies related to ‘Ndranghela’ were about to begin work on post earthquake projects.

Ninety percent of the businesses run by the Mafia and then taken over by the State fail. A supermarket let 500 employees go after the State takeover. The unemployed say, “The Mafia gave us work. The State takes it away.”

Everywhere, from traditional sectors such as construction to innovative renewable energy, waste from supermarkets, from health care to welfare, dall’agroalimentare to tourism and gambling, you find the Mafia. This Mafia no longer operates with gun shots and blasts of Kalashnikovs, although no one forgets them. Instead they use dirty money, corruption and apparently clean business support: The financial and managerial face of the mafia.

The Clean face is only a mask, warns the prosecutor of Reggio Calabria, Federico Cafiero de Raho, long at the head of the DDA in Naples, a great connoisseur of the new dynamics of the Mafia businesswomen. He speaks of the “gauntlet of credit” provided by the clans. Entrepreneurs must understand that they not only lose their money but also their safety and freedom. The Mafia is here among us, manages business, finances, does the friendly face, and there are those who think to take advantage of. We never tire of quoting the words of a businessman from Calabria years under escort, “Here, there are entrepreneurs who pay protection money and others that are raking it in.” When the Mafia arrive before judges it is always too late.

Assessing China’s Economic Stability

Posted on June 22, 2014 by Adela Rogers

Michael Spence discusses the importance of China’s economy and the issues facing it: Faotors impacting on growth are China’s current territorial disputes with its neighbors, the deteriorating relationship with the US and Xi’s efforts to make the country more transparent and less corrupt.

Spence asserts that because China as such a large presence in global markets, it may be demand-constrained which would take a trio of policies involving high return on investment, higher value of government services and higher level of consumer demand.

Public and private investment can drive China’s growth, but only if the returns are high. China is doing this as it licenses new private banks and a shadow banking system. Minimum wages have increased household income and the potential for demand. But there is a question about whether income growth or leverage is driving demand. Leverage, of course, brings future demand to the present, but does not solve future problems.

Abu Dhabi Bank Launches Talent Platform For Emirates Women

Posted on June 22, 2014 by Kathrin Katanoba

Andy Sambidge reports: Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank (ADCB) has launched a talent development platform that aims to empower Emirates women in the job market.

The new platform, named Tamooha, will provide job opportunities that suit women’s social norms and family responsibilities by enabling them to choose to work from or near their own home or in ADCB’s dedicated women-only operations centre in Al Ain, the bank said in a statement.

It added that additional centres are being developed in the Western Region and the Northern Emirates in order to accommodate a total of more than 300 female employees.

ADCB said that female employees will be responsible for non- customer facing roles including data entry, auditing and validating the accuracy of transactions received from branches and call centres, such as new account requests, clearing checks as well as outbound customer experience calls.

Tamooha is part of ADCB’s ambition to promote Emiratisation at various administrative levels in line with the directives of the UAE’s leadership. This includes providing more opportunities and bigger roles for Emirates women and creating an appropriate environment for them, the statement added.

Ala’a Eraiqat, ADCB’s CEO, said: “At ADCB, we’re committed to supporting the right of Emirates women to pursue their careers without compromising their social norms. “We are proud to be the first bank to provide a unique career structure that enables Emirates women to join the workforce while meeting their everyday life responsibilities…We have already received encouraging feedback on the initiative and have hired 100 women in addition to the women administrative officers in charge of work teams who are responsible for training and supervising operations.”

Employment for Emarati Women

Bank Regulation: Why?

Posted on June 21, 2014 by Lily Fleur

With the Assange dcoument about bank regulations being released, it is good to go back to Elizabeth Warren. Here she is discussing her role on COP, the Congressional Oversight Panel to which Harry Reid, Speaker of the Senate, appointed he when she was teaching at Harvard.

We forget what the difference between banks and insurance companies and other public companies is. Banks handle other peoples’ money. Not theirs.

Oversight of banks is in the interest of the public good. Because bankers act like they do not have the public responsibility, they reset oversight.

Here is Warren on the nerve this comimittee was sriking when they asked members of th ebaning community to tesify. (COP did not have subpoena power, so people could come or not as theywished.)

Hank Greenberg, by then the fromer CEO of AIG, called Warren and demanded to see her in her offices at Harvard. He did not dispute the conclusions of the COP: the wild risk-taking at AIG and its risk to the entire economy. Instead he wanted to talk about why he was under-appreciated as a great CEO.

When he was unable to persuade Warren that AIG had been a messy risk tangle under his leadership, he turned his anger on Eliot Spitzer, the former Atotrney General of New York State. When that didn’t get him anywhere where gave up.

Warren’s conclusion: executives of large financial institutions have very different world views than other people. If these companies did not have in trust so much money that was not theirs, this egocentrism might not be so consequential. But we have given banks an advantage. They get, manage and profit from other peoples’ money and they are considered so indispensable to the economy that we will not let them fail when they deserve to. At least if we don’t let them fail, we should put some fo their leaders in jail.

Google to Teach High School Girls to Code

Posted on June 21, 2014 by Lily Fleur

Google’s diversity report last month revealed just how white and male the company — and the tech industry as a whole — really is. But in a first step to correct the disparity, the company has launched a new initiative to help get school-age girls interested in coding. Made with Code.

By the numbers, women make up half of the economy’s workforce but are seldom represented in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields. Women only make up about 25 percent of STEM jobs and have even lower representation in tech alone.

Google reported they employ only three women for every seven men, and just 17 percent of their tech workers are women. Yahoo introduced its own diversity program. Both companies also reported low rates of women in leadership positions. Yahoo only had 15 percent women in tech supervisory roles, compared to 21 percent at Google, which has no female executives and only one woman on its senior leadership team.

But the lack of women in the tech workforce goes beyond 24/7 jobs and pizza rinds. Less than 20 percent of high school girls take the advanced placement (AP) computer science test, or go on to earn a college degree in the subject. While AP computer science courses aren’t available at most schools, two states didn’t have a single female student take the test in 2013.

Girls also tend to be steered away from STEM, and many develop negative views of the field early on. While 80 percent of high school students are clueless as to what computer science majors learn, female students unfamiliar with the subject often associated it with words such as “boring” and “hard.”

Made With Code aims to close the gap by showing girls that there’s more to coding than it seems. Girls will be able to design 3-D printed bracelets or create songs using Blockly coding technology, which lets users build programs with blocks of code rather than typing it in manually. The program spotlights women who are dancers, music producers, cinematographers and humanitarians and shows how they all use coding to do their jobs. Google is also sponsoring and partnering with similar initiatives nationwide such as Girls Who Code, Black Girls Code and Technovation.

Assange Releases Document Showing How Bank Regulation is Being Stifled

Posted on June 21, 2014 by Adela Rogers

Deal among 50 countries would help prevent added regulation of financial services, website says. WikiLeaks-secret-tisa-financial-annex

WikiLeaks has published what it calls “the secret draft text for the Trade in Services Agreement (TISA) Financial Services Annex,” apparently covering 50 countries and most of the world’s trade in services.

“The draft Financial Services Annex sets rules which would assist the expansion of financial multinationals — mainly headquartered in New York, London, Paris and Frankfurt — into other nations by preventing regulatory barriers,” the website says in a statement.

The draft deal is seen as a way to prevent more regulation of financial services, despite calls for tighter regulatory measures that followed the 2007-08 world financial crisis. That market meltdown set the world’s biggest banks up against critics who said governments needed to rein them in. Canada is among the countries named as being partner to the negotiations. The last round of TISA talks took place April 28 to May 2 in Geneva.

WikiLeaks also alleged in its statement that the U.S. is “particularly keen on boosting cross-border data flow” and that this would include personal and financial data.

On Wednesday, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange promised the release of a massive cache of documents Thursday, involving 50 countries, including Canada.

Mattel Introduces Entrepreneur Barbie

Posted on June 20, 2014 by Adela Rogers

Mattel consulted with real live entrepreneurs in the creation of their new doll. She carries a smart phone and a tablet and is launching her own million dollar company. All good for the “I Can Be” line of Barbies.

But why are we still living with an anatomical presentation that can’t be: unless you live under the plastic surgeon’s knife and eat nothing. When will Mattel make their iconic figure like the rest of us?

Swiss Want to Keep Their Paradise

Posted on June 20, 2014 by Adela Rogers

The Swiss National Council is the lower house of Parliament. They are debating compliance with internationl law on money laundering.

The Swiss Government (Bundesrat) had forwarded the bill to modify the Swiss money laundering act to Federal Council, implementing the revised Financial Action Task Force (FATF) recommendations.

Lawmakers increased the tax threshold for a case of tax evasion to be deemed to be a serious tax offence, from CHF200,000 (USD229,164) to CHF300,00. Furthermore, they did not agree to limit cash payments to CHF100,000.

Swiss business federation (Economiesuisse) had claimed that the bill had needlessly surpassed the FATF requirements. In its current form, the proposed legislation would burden banks with excessive bureaucracy, and places undue restrictions on businesses, the group said.

Economiesuisse said that as well as raising the qualifying threshold for a major tax offence, lawmakers should add a further criterion – multiple offences, to give financial intermediaries greater certainty when reporting their clients to the tax authority.

Economiesuisse also said that limiting cash payments is both unnecessary and arbitrary. It called on the National Council to improve the bill.

In its current version the bill would fall short of the FATF’s recommendation with the consequence that Switzerland could be blacklisted by the FATF, according to the Swiss finance minister Evelyn Widmer-Schlumpf. Parl_PressRelease_19.6.14 / German

The Senate or upper house approves submission to international standards, but the National Council is steadfast in its rejection of transparency and cash.

Rodrigo Matos

Schweiz möchte Paradies für Geldwäscher bleiben

US CFTC Fines 44 Million for Fraud and Misappropriation

Posted on June 19, 2014 by Adela Rogers

The US Commodity Futures Trading Commission fines Commodity Trading Companies for Pool Fraud and Misappropriation.

CFTC release: Federal Court in Utah Imposes over $44 Million in Sanctions against Robert Andres and His Company, Winsome Investment Trust, and Robert Holloway and His Company, US Ventures, for Commodity Pool Fraud and Misappropriation

The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Utah Filed Parallel Criminal Actions against Andres and Holloway

Washington, DC — The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) obtained a federal court Order requiring Defendants Robert J. Andres of Houston, Texas, his company, Winsome Investment Trust (Winsome), Robert L. Holloway of San Diego, California, and his company US Ventures LC (USV), to pay a civil monetary penalty of $32,370,000 and restitution for defrauded customers totaling $12 million. The court’s Order also imposes permanent trading and registration bans against Andres, Winsome, Holloway, and USV and prohibits them from violating provisions of the Commodity Exchange Act, as charged.

The default judgment Order stems from a CFTC civil enforcement action filed on January 24, 2011, that charged the Defendants with fraud in the operation of a commodity futures pool (see CFTC Press Release 5976-11). The Order (see Related Link) was entered by the Honorable Bruce S. Jenkins of the U.S. District Court for the District of Utah on June 6, 2014.

Specifically, the Order finds that:

• From at least May 2005 through November 2008, Andres and Winsome fraudulently solicited and accepted at least $50.2 million from at least 243 individuals to invest in a commodity futures pool operated by Holloway and USV. In their solicitations, Andres and Winsome falsely claimed a successful track record and guaranteed the return of participants’ principal and profits; however, contrary to Andres’s and Winsome’s claims of consistently profitable trading, USV’s and Holloway’s futures trading was not successful, sustaining overall net losses of approximately $10.7 million.

• The Defendants allegedly traded only a portion of Winsome’s pool’s funds and misappropriated the majority of participant funds to pay purported “profits” to pool participants in a manner akin to a Ponzi scheme, to provide money to Andres’ wife, and to invest in various unrelated and undisclosed businesses, including using $4.2 million of participant funds to purchase an aerospace consulting business.

• Holloway used participant funds to pay personal and unrelated business expenses, and to pay for houses, cars, home furnishings, jewelry, lawn and maid services, and credit card bills in the name of his wife. Holloway also used participant funds to finance his wife’s eBay business, Alcoy Enterprises, LLC.

• Andres and Holloway attempted to conceal the fraud by directing employees to falsify participants’ account records and by providing e-mailed account statements to participants falsely representing that Holloway profitably traded pool funds -– sustaining virtually no losses during the relevant period.

In a parallel criminal actions brought by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Utah, Andres was indicted on five counts of wire fraud, and Holloway was indicted on four counts of wire fraud and one count of making and filing a false income tax return. Holloway’s trial date is currently set for July 8, 2014. Andres pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud, and he is scheduled to be sentenced on August 20, 2014.

The CFTC appreciates the assistance of the Comisión Nacional del Mercado de Valores (Spain), the Dubai Financial Services Authority, and the British Virgin Islands Financial Services Commission.

W-T-W.org

Women and Finance