Can Brad Pitt Turn Us Onto Stocks and Investing? The sex and stock connection.

Carol Chapman member for 22 weeks 6 days Send a message

We may have discovered why men seem to be so more interested in investing than women. And it’s not about stocks. It’s about sex.

Do you ever think about your Apple stock the way you think about, say, Brad Pitt? Do you daydream about owning shares of Dreamworks the way you do about dating a dreamboat? Then you're an exception. It's actually men who seem to confuse sexual attraction with stock attraction.

Remember the big investing bubble of the ‘80s when strutting Wall Street types called themselves Masters of the Universe? Well, it turns out these testosterone-driven traders might be masters of Mars, but we women still have control of Venus when it comes to investing.

More and more study results keep pouring in that reveal the astonishing, amazing, bewildering fact that men think differently about investing than women. And that, in fact, sex and testosterone have something to do with the way they invest. Duh!!! Actually, we women shouldn’t be surprised. Not being burdened with an excess of testosterone, we’re already free of a biological compulsion for risk that drives many male investors.

A study by Cambridge University, which measured the hormone levels of young male stock traders as they made high-stake deals, showed a direct correlation between trades and testosterone levels. The researchers found that the traders tended to make more money on days when their testosterone levels were high. That is, they took bigger risks when they were getting a high from their huevos, as our Latina friends might express it.

A Wall Street Journal writer conjectured that this could mean that testosterone could also play a role in inflating stock prices and creating economic bubbles.

In another study, which took place at Stanford University, researchers used brain scans to find out what was going on inside of the minds of Masters-of-the-Universe-to-be when they took financial risks. And guess what was on their minds? It was sex. When young men were shown erotic pictures, they were more likely to make a bigger financial gamble than if they were shown a picture of something scary, such as a snake, or of something harmless, like a stapler.

The researchers found that the erotic pictures lit up the same part of the brain that lights when financial risks are taken. So for young male investors, women and money light up the same place in their brains.

It’s a little sobering to think that Angelina Jolie and a big chunk of Google stock would turn on a young man in the same way!

Women just aren’t wired that way. So what happens when we’re shown pictures of Brad Pitt? We might think about photoshopping his body on top of our current flame. But do we want to buy lots of shares of Exxon? Well, not exactly.

So what would it take to turn us on to stocks? How about imagining a picture of ourselves with our loved ones, looking happy and healthy and prosperous, long past the age when the Brad Pitts of the world would give us a second glance. Now that’s a fantasy worth keeping.

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Great post! Very

Great post! Very informative. Thanks so much for sharing this vital information with us Carol!

That is amazing

That is amazing information!! Thank you for sharing it...
Amy V
http://www.aphromesiac.com

re:investing

so when women think of investing we are thinking of providing more security and happiness for our families and men are thinking more money, more women, more sex?

Stocks and sex

Hi, Breana. I think that for men, stock trading goes back to the deep instincts for becoming the alpha male and all the things that go with the territory. That can also mean being the provider. So we alpha women can think of investing as a way of providing, too!