Author: Hannah Butcher

I'm a Portfolio Manager at Meyer Capital Management.

Long-Term Investor, Short-Term Attention Span

On By Hannah ButcherIn Investing, People, Personal Finance

Society has an activity addiction. We constantly need to be entertained. So much so that the average human attention span is only 8.25 seconds – down from 12 seconds a decade ago and almost an entire second less than a goldfish’s, according to Statistic Brain. Undoubtedly, millennials bring this average down a bit. 77% of people aged 18-25 said if nothing is occupying their attention, they will grab their phone, compared to only 10% of those over age 65. Begrudgingly, I can attest to this. I’m currently working to complete my MBA degree through Ohio University, which is rewarding but includes a lot of paper writing. Although I’m thriving, I’ll admit if I had a nickel for every time I checked my phone, answered a text message or opened an off-topic internet tab instead of focusing on a paper, I wouldn’t need to earn my MBA…I’d just buy one.

*stops writing this post to research the going price for MBA degree*

Obviously I can’t actually buy a graduate degree and as easy as it is to joke about the fact that many of us can’t pay attention anymore, this notion made think (impressively, for more than 8 seconds) about how investors are affected by short attention spans. This mindset makes investors hypersensitive to trading frequency (“Why didn’t my investment adviser buy anything today!?”) and short-term price movements (“She bought that for me last week, why is it already down -1%!?”). This mentality can cause investors to “act just to act,” or worse, act solely on short-term volatility.

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Investment Strategy: Gender-Based Differences

On By Hannah ButcherIn Investing, People

Men own penny stocks on Mars and women have a money market account on Venus.

At least I think that’s how the saying goes…

Okay, maybe not quite like that but the point is, there are noticeable differences between genders when it comes to investing strategies. Many of these came to light just recently, since for years it was the norm for the men to handle most couples’ finances. As women became a bigger presence in the work force, waited longer to get married and couples began divorcing more frequently, women found themselves solely in charge of their own finances. Once they began to invest, based on their own values and goals, it became evident they (typically) invest much differently than their male counterparts. As an investor, a professional investment adviser and a woman myself, this idea is intriguing to me, so I decided to explore these differences…what they mean…and what to do about them.

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Learn to Be a One-Man Wolf Pack

On By Hannah ButcherIn Investing

“…Well all my friends were doing it!”

“If all your friends jumped off a bridge, would you too!?!”

As kids, we all had some variation of this conversation with our parents, right?

So, as adult investors, we know that we shouldn’t blindly purchase a stock just because everyone else is, right? Unfortunately, no. Over time, individual investors consistently buy-high and sell-low, despite trying hard to do the opposite. The root of this trend is that, even after lectures from mom and dad, human beings find comfort in numbers.

“But Mommmm, everyone else is buying that stock!!”

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