More women entering investment arena

Words like stock market, equities, margins or stop loss were Greek for Suvarna Kulkarni until two years ago. Today however, the 40-something bank officer has over 20 scrips in her portfolio.

Daily headlines about the rising Sensex level and the high decibel debates on the television channels sparked off curiousity about the share markets in a rather new set of retail investors -- women.

According to Kulkarni, the tribe of women entering the investing community is growing fast.

"From my own observations and from the reports and information I access, I think the number of women investors in stock markets is growing," she says.

Statistics offered by the brokerage houses more or less bear her out. "There is definitely an increase in the number of women account holders. We see many couples showing keen interest in understanding the workings of the market. An increasing number of housewives have been running their investments like a business," said Ganesh Prasad Pradhan, director of Sajag Securities.

According to ICICI Bank officials, out of the 8,000 or so new demat accounts opened every month, 20 per cent are by women, compared with the 10 per cent it saw a couple of years ago.

"There has been a 20 to 30 per cent increase in demat and brokerage accounts opened  by women," sources from HDFC Securities said.

Farah Patel, a youngster totally unaware of bulls and bears till recently, is now not just an investor in the stock market; she is also a share and mutual funds broker. 

"My husband talks about shares and dividend and bonuses quite often and this triggered my interest in the activity of investing in shares," Farah says.

The facility of watching the stock markets and listening to experts on television  further fuelled the interest and Farah now deals with blue chips and mid caps with the same ease as a man would. 

The phenomenon also marks a shift from the practice of a man investing in the name of his wife, daughter, mother or sister. "Women's increasing interest in investing, coupled with stricter norms such as permanent account number details has been discouraging such dummy investments," observers point out.

The closer watch by the tax authorities and better traceability of money coming into stock investments has checked the practice of one person investing in other person's name, they stress.

Pradhan says the composition of people attending investor camps or training programmes is an indication of women becoming serious investors. "Out of about 200 people at these meets, there are 20 to 25 women, whereas the number was one or two, till recently," Pradhan said.

And the investment decisions too are becoming more and more information based. "Women are far more meticulous and discerning, when it comes to investing. They carefully weigh pros and cons before taking decisions and don't have sudden spurts of whims and fancies while evaluating decisions. Men give a 25 per cent weightage to comfort levels with companies they are investing in, while that figure for women would be 40 per cent." Pradhan added.

"Most women keep themselves updated through daily news on companies and finance. Others take tips from male colleagues who have been trading since long or work in the financial sector," Farah said adding, she holds shares of about a dozen  companies engaged in diverse fields.

Kulkarni, on the other hand, has invested in companies in high growth sectors such as software, enginnering and metals.

In addition to being smart investors, these women are also assering themselves as shareholders.

Kulkarni, for instance took a flight to Bangalore in June 2005 to attend the annual general meeting of Infosys Technologies where she is a shareholder.

"During that visitand visits to other companies, I observed that there is an evident increase in the number of women making their presence felt at AGMs," she added.