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Product markets, gender, and investment behavior

Journal of Financial Markets 2025 open access
We examine firms that primarily target male or female consumers and find that female (male) households overweight female- (male)-focused firms. Females’ investment returns slightly outperform men, but they significantly underperform when investing in female-focused firms. Females trade less than men, but their trading activity increases to match men in female-focused firms. We observe weaker, but similar patterns among institutional investors, indicating that even professional investors are influenced by gender-based preferences. Our findings support domain-specific overconfidence among female investors when investing in firms they are more familiar with and where they may perceive having expertise.