Earlier this week we talked about how the recession has been tougher on male workers than females. Now, it seems, men's investment portfolios may have taken a bigger hit too.

本周早些时候，我们探讨了衰退如何对男性的影响超过女性。现在看起来，似乎男性的投资组合受到的打击也会更大一些。

Based on a two-year study of 2.7 million people with retirement funds at Vanguard, the mutual-fund company, men were 10% more likely than women to cash out of the stock market altogether during the worst, most turbulent times. Women were more likely to stay the course, avoiding radical changes in their holdings.

基于对在共同基金公司Vanguard持有退休基金的270万人进行为时两年的研究发现，在股市最糟糕、最动荡之时，清仓退市的人中，男性比女性多10%。女性更可能坚持到底，避免在持仓期做出极端改变。

Men tend to trade more actively than women as a result of greater overconfidence in their ability to make good investment decisions, the Vanguard study says. 'There's been a lot of academic research suggesting that men think they know what they're doing, even when they really don't know what they're doing,' a Vanguard researcher told the New York Times. Overconfident investors tend to feel they are able to make decisions they aren't qualified to make, or lack enough information to support.

Vanguard基金的研究表明，男性因对自身投资决策能力更为自信，因而通常比女性交易更频繁。Vanguard基金公司一名研究员对《纽约时报》说，大量的学术研究表明，男性认为清楚自己在做什么，即使他们实际上不清楚之时也这样认为。过分自信的投资者往往觉得对其不擅长或缺乏足够信息支持之事也有能力进行决策。

Men also are more likely to hold self-directed investment accounts, says a study by Charles Schwab, which allow them to trade more freely than other kinds of accounts.

嘉信理财(Charles Schwab)的一份研究显示，男性也更可能持有自主型投资帐户，这种帐户使他们更方便自由交易。

Women, on the other hand, seem more likely to admit what they don't know, such as the direction of the stock market. And because they tend to trade less than men, they pay fewer commissions. This has been interpreted as under-confidence in the past, but at the moment it looks pretty smart.

而女性更可能承认自己不了解诸如股市趋势等，而且往往比男性交易的次数少，付的佣金也少。这在以往可解释为缺乏自信，但在当下，这种做法看起来更为聪明。

On the downside, women tend to put more of their portfolios into bonds and money market funds, curbing returns in a bull market.

I have seen this pattern in my own household. My kids' dad (also my ex-husband and close friend) has long been the more aggressiveinvestor, and for most of the past 20 years he has reaped better returns in the stock market than I. But before and during this recession, my more cautious investment style paid off. Before the recession began, I had sold stock in our son's college fund gradually, in stages, a conservativestrategy he didn't endorse, but that wound up protecting the fund from steep losses later. I can't take credit; the discount brokerage firm I use recommended the strategy.

Sue Shellenbarger

从不利的一面说，女性往往更多投资于债券及货币市场基金，在牛市中收益受到限制。

我自己家中就存在这种情况。我孩子的父亲（也是我前夫及好友），一向是个积极投资者，在过去20多年的时间里，他从股市所得的收益超过我。但在此次经济衰退之前及当中，我采取的更谨慎的投资风格获得了回报。在衰退开始前，我分期抛售了在我们儿子大学基金中的股份，而他未采取这一保守策略。但这一清盘措施保护了这笔资金不至于日后产生大幅损失。但我并不能居功，因这项策略是我选用的折扣经纪公司推荐的。