June 17, 1999
Tools and Pep Talks for Novice Investors
By LAURIE J. FLYNN
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Homer's ancient world, Cassandra was a beautiful Trojan princess upon whom the god Apollo
bestowed the gift of prophecy. But
when Cassandra refused to repay his
generosity with sexual favors, Apollo
put a curse on her: her prophecies --
all of disaster -- would be accurate
but nobody would understand or believe her.
The Cassandra myth has been
adopted by the modern investment
community as a metaphor for foretelling disaster. For Ellen McGirt,
the stockbroker- turned-Web-site- producer behind Cassandra's Revenge, the tale (adjusting it liberally) is a metaphor for the plight of
women seeking to become investors.
Given the right information, Ms.
McGirt said, women should learn to
trust their own prophecies and heed
their own investment advice.
For many women, that's a stretch.
According to Merrill Lynch's Ninth
Annual Retirement and Financial
Planning Survey, for 1998, most
American women simply do not feel
well prepared for making investment choices. Only 57 percent of
women surveyed said they felt comfortable (compared with 78 percent
of men).
The average woman will spend
fewer years in the labor force than
the average man.
To Ms. McGirt, this fact makes
women far more vulnerable to money problems than men, given that
they have less exposure to investment opportunities, retirement contributions and other advantages of
employment.
The Web can help.
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Resources on money,
with a premium on
self-reliance.
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The early
years of the Web saw the rise of numerous innovative small investment
sites. Sadly but perhaps not surprisingly, by now most of them have disappeared, squeezed out in part by the
onslaught of women's megasites. On
those larger sites would-be investors
can usually expect to find a predictable mix of investment advice columns, on topics like saving for your
children's college education and for
retirement.
What these sites try to provide is a
comfortable place for women to seek
information, form investment clubs
and ask questions of experts and
peers, all without leaving their desks.
And then there are sites that, like the
mythical superwoman, try to do it
all, by providing scores of financial
calculators and dishing out empirical advice on investment strategies.
Granted, there is no embarrassment of riches here; only a handful
of these sites offer the appropriate
tools along with the depth of research necessary for serious investors.