Roethenbach (dpa) – “Stock market trading is something done with a gut feeling,” says Marianne Greul, who then notes: “And women simply have a better instinct than men have.”
It is such feminine intuition on which the investment club “Frauen-Power” (women’s power) is based in the town of Roethenbach, near Nuremberg.
The club is off-limits to men. Instead, 98 women stock market speculators have grouped together in Frauen-Power to test their fortune in a world still dominated by males.
And with success: since its founding three months ago, the ladies with their start-up depot of 127,000 marks (61,500 dollars) have realised a profit of 5,000 marks. Pro-rated over a year, that is something like a 16 per cent gain.
When they get together, the talk is not about cooking recipes or rearing their children, but rather about the Dow Jones Index or the DAX Index in Frankfurt.
“It was like an avalanche which struck us,” said Monika Neunsinger, a banker, about the interest in the club.
On the first evening, 66 women set up the club, and since then membership has grown to 98. The club has stopped taking on new members and the waiting list is a long one.
The rules are simple. Each participant signs on for 1,000 marks and then pays a further 100 marks a month. All the money is invested in stocks, with the club members meeting to decide on which shares to be purchased.
“We don’t buy only fashion and cosmetics company shares,” says a club executive, Marianne Schmidt, in quickly clearing up any stereotypical ideas about what the ladies are focusing on.
The 15 stocks which the club has invested in are in such fields as high-technology, Internet, insurance and automobiles, as well as, to be on the safe side, some mutual funds. The goal is long-term dividends which can also help beef up the women’s retirement savings.
“We aren’t a gambling club,” Neunsinger says. But she notes that as a group, deciding on a speculative strategy is easier. By buying several different kinds of stocks, the risks are spread more evenly.
“We women can agree more quickly among ourselves. If a man were around, it wouldn’t be so easy-going and harmonious,” she argues.
There are no membership fees, because the club’s six-woman executive committee works on an honourary basis. A member can only leave the club after one year.
So far the club’s strategy has worked, even though it has suffered one flop. “We bought an Internet share for 84 euros (78 dollars), which then dropped by half,” Schmidt admits. “But it is recovering again.”
The regular meetings also offer an opportunity for members to learn the intricacies of the stock market. They bring in experts to teach them such topics as share splitting and how the DAX Index is composed.
Men aren’t allowed in as a matter of principle.
“We want to do it ourselves and show the men what we are capable of,” says Betty Winter, a retiree, in a combative tone of voice. At 68 she is the oldest club member and has now caught the investment fever.
“I read the Boersenzeitung (a stock market newspaper) every day. And when I get back from vacation, the first thing I do is go to my bank to see whether we have made any profits,” Winter says.
If at first the stock market was totally new territory for many of the women, by now they feel more and more at ease.
“In the past I would barely glance at the business section of the newspaper,” Marianne Greuel said. “Now it’s the first thing I read.”
The youngest club member is just 20 years old, and in some cases, the members unite families of mothers, daughters and daughters-in- law.
Despite the off-limits ban on men, there was one man who did have a major role. Werner Stroehlein, head of the local savings bank, came up with the idea of a woman-only investment club.
“Women tend to be given more conservative advice,” he said, noting that many male investment advisors simply don’t take women completely seriously.
On the home front, in the meantime, many husbands who initially were sceptical about the Frauen-Power club have come to accept the new hobby of their wives.
“When my husband comes home in the evening the first thing he asks is how our shares are doing,” says Ingrid Daut.
And Marianne Schmidt says that her husband recently gave her a book whose title is “Geld tut Frauen richtig gut” – roughly meaning: Money is really good for women.
