WARREN BUFFETT INVESTS LIKE A GIRL

A debut author impugns Warren Buffett’s masculinity—in a good way—and asserts that feminine thinking like his is what leads to investment riches.

Lofton, a managing editor at The Motley Fool, ascribes investor rashness and hubris to roaring male testosterone. Of course, this isn’t a problem for innately conservative, deliberate and never ruinously overconfident female investors—or, for that matter, the great sage Buffett who, as the title of this book would have readers believe, invests like a girl. This means, among other things, standing by your stocks during downturns and not bolting for the exit like the typical hair-trigger male investor. Mover-and-shaker investors, if they are men, may and often do feel that they are geniuses until proven idiots; women, with Buffett-like humility learned over the millennia, are less likely to fall into this trap. The same could be said of Buffett, who famously remarked that if he had an IQ of 160, he would sell 40 points. Lest it appear that Lofton is merely expressing gender pride, she touches up her arguments with statistics and a pop-psychology veneer and ends with a series of interviews with a sampling of top female investors. Thankfully, the narrative tails off before delving deeper into errant male responsibility for much of what threatens humanity, including war and global warming.

Lofton lays out sound feminine and Motley Fool–worthy rules for investment that men would be wise to heed—sure to be more popular with women than men.