By, for and about women

Book review: Investments among 'Chicks'

"Chicks Laying Nest Eggs: How 10 Skirts Beat the Pants off Wall Street ... and How You Can, Too"
By Karin Housley
Crown Publishing, 277 pages, April

By Porter Anderson
CNN Career

(CNN) -- Far fewer than a thousand words may add up to a picture here for you: "The Chicks talk about investing in everyday English. ... What happened to that 'You Go Girl' attitude? If you keep putting money blindly into that fund, let me sell you my mint-condition Ford Pinto. Do you think Mary Tyler Moore had Murray manage her cash?"

"Everyday English" for Karin Housley is something that may sound to you like a sitcom for fans of social stereotypes. You get a portfolio of it in "Chicks Laying Nest Eggs."

The book's first chapter is titled "I Am Woman ... Hear Me Roar." In it, Housley tells her reader, "We've come a long way, baby, but until the world sees that women can bring home the bacon and fry it up in the pan, we will be met with resistance when entering an otherwise male-dominated territory."

Housley is right. Financial investment has been an overwhelmingly male-dominated world. That's wrong and women should have thoroughly equal access to it. What's more, the Internet makes that much easier for women, as it does for many men who never liked facing brokerages full of surrogate patriarchs, either. The rise of online investing has put portfolio control into investors' hands.

And Housley's returns on her own investments in the field include a career -- she's on the interview circuit this month with her book, talking up the "Chicks" way to sock away money.

The success claim here: "From September 1998 through December 2000," the portfolio operated by Chicks Laying Nest Eggs -- Housley's online investment club -- "went up 17.09 percent, compared to 8.16 percent for the S&P 500."

Deja difficulty

The caution light blinking at you is three years old. The Beardstown (Illinois) Business and Professional Women's Investment Club in 1998 learned that its 23.4-percent return rate on nine years of investments was actually 9.1 percent. A "computer input error" was blamed -- hardly something more female than male. But three years' time may not be enough to shake the jitters set off by the Beardstown Ladies' troubles.

So Housley and her associates may encounter a little reluctance from some potential readers. This kind of career-related how-to stuff has glittered before.

Karin Housley

Nevertheless, those who do look into Housley's "Chicks" book will find all the usual explanations of market elements and how they work. Housley had the benefit of the Motley Fool site's voluminous self-directed investment wisdom during her program's development.

The "Chicks' Dozen" criteria for stock picking won't faze anybody who's been around investments for any time at all -- buy what you know; K.I.S.S. (Keep It Simple, Sister); what is the industry?; is your company the leader in its field?; look for repeat profitability; check gross margins; check net margins; look for lots of cash; is the flow ratio better than 1.50?; is there increasing growth?; is there strong management and operating history?; buy on sale -- you want a price below the 52-week average.

And there are perfectly useful instructions on how to pull together an interested investment group, carry on the functions of the group online and research and invest in equities. There are 10 members of the Chicks group, as you can learn at its Web site, usually identified as "Chick Cheryl," "Chick Jana," "Chick Lorene" and so on -- ages ranging from 31 to 63. Chick Cheryl writes about Peter Lynch in the book as "a rooster who thinks like a chick."

As in so many things, your response to this book -- and its usefulness to you -- will come down to taste.

The Chicks Laying Nest Eggs investment club

There's no question that many workers today find self-directed investments an important part of their career and life. And investment groups are the way to go for plenty of folks. It may appeal to you to have the officers of that group described for you as "president -- head hen; vice president -- second chick in charge; secretary -- chicken scratcher;" and "treasurer -- egg carton."

As you may know, you have a male reviewer here and the women's-club jargon Housley deploys rings strained to these ears -- in the same way that an investing guide laden with tire-changing, locker-slamming, grunt-'n'-burp palaver might weigh down a book aimed at men.

But to each her own. The point is the investing. And you won't miss that in Housley's book.

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ChicksLayingNestEggs.com
Crown Publishing Group at Random House
The Motley Fool

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