How do you make money from the stock market? Hire women to make the investment decisions.

The science on this is in, and hasn’t changed. Academic studies over many decades produce the same results.

Women make better fund managers. They lose less when times are hard and make more when they are good.

They trade less often, which cuts their costs. They don’t believe they can second guess wider markets, so don’t bother to try. They make a conviction pick, then they stick with it.

Their heads are less likely to be turned by faddish trends. They invest other people’s money as if it were their own.

Outside of the professionals, women feel less confident than men do when investing in the stock market. Which in turn makes them more cautious, less impulsive. And better

I’ve conducted two journalistic experiments on this myself, the point of which was to show that investment professionals really aren’t all that good.

Along the way, the amateurs or women professionals beat the men. Hands down. Not even close.

When I was City Editor of The Sun we ran a stock tipping competition that pitched some experts against readers and Page 3 girl Lacey Banghard. (I swear that is her real name.)

Lacey won. Top City trader Nick “The Moose” Batsford came 60^th.

An earlier experiment at the Evening Standard pitted various City experts against a cat and a mattress.

The results seem lost to Google, but I know the (female) cat beat most of the male stockbrokers.

The gender identity of the mattress was not disclosed.

And so to an FT special report on Diversity Leaders.

It reports that: “Fund managers prove slow to address gender imbalance.”

Only 12.5% of portfolio managers – the people who make the investment decisions – are women.

Dame Helena Morrissey, chair of the Diversity Project, says: “It makes the industry look backward compared with others that have made further, faster progress — such as medicine, law and accountancy. And that creates a chicken-and-egg situation: young women might feel put off joining an industry where they perceive fewer opportunities to advance.”

Backwards, and foolish. If this isn’t a PR problem for the industry, it should be.

Please send candidates for press release of the day to: Simon.english@roxhillmedia.com