Gender gap still exists in trading
Veronica Locklear says she's a bit of a night owl. That's because she stays up late doing market research. During the day she works as a part-time Spanish translator, looks after her 14-year-old daughter and, if the markets are right, trades options.
"It's fun. I actually love the market. I find it incredibly interesting," Locklear said. "I know my husband doesn't have the patience for options. I've tried to explain it to him. He doesn't get it, and he doesn't want to get it."
Locklear is among the few women who trade options, which give investors the right to buy or sell an asset, like a stock or a commodity, at a fixed price in the future.
It's well know that floor trading, or "open-outcry" trading, has always been dominated by men who have advantages of size and voice. But the advent of online trading so far hasn't done much to break down the gender discrepancy.
Some say the lack of women traders is a missed opportunity for exchanges and brokerages. Volume at the Chicago Board Options Exchange has steadily increased in recent months, hitting 5.3 million trades one day last week compared with average daily trade volume of 3.8 million in March 2007.
Nevertheless, a recent study by Chicago-based brokerage OptionsHouse Inc. of 720 online traders found 91 percent of traders surveyed are men and 57 percent are between the ages of 45 and 64.
"The industry needs to educate younger investors and women if it is to grow faster," wrote Scott Brueggeman, chief marketing officer at OptionsHouse, in a statement.
"It has absolutely been my experience that there are fewer women online, fewer women managing their investments, period," said Kim Snider, founder of Snider Advisors in Dallas. Snider says about 20 percent of her financial advisory firms' clients are women.
Locklear, who lives in Clearwater, Fla., and is an OptionsHouse client, has been trading options for 15 years. She says with the demands of jobs and kids, she's not surprised there aren't more women trading.
"I think it's a reality of the kind of lifestyle that we have," Locklear said, pointing out most markets are open from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m.
"It's not a time a lot of people have open. You can't trade weekends," she added.
Brueggeman says options trading is a "natural progression" from an investing standpoint, which begins with savings and money market accounts and then progresses to stock and bond indexes. More advanced investors may eventually use options to hedge, or reduce risk, in other investments.
According to a study by OppenheimerFunds Distributor Inc., 90 percent of women at some point in their lives will have to manage their finances themselves or hire someone to do it.