She's not bossy, she's the CEO
Hi friends!
Welcome to Better Have My Money, my weekly newsletter about stocks for newbies who are a lil terrified by the stock market. Better Have My Money is a gif-filled rundown of thing I'm learning from my own tiny brand new stock portfolio (from how to buy a share, to being mad about how much CEOs get paid, to picking cheapish stocks to buy) and the things we're figuring out together.
So in honor of seeing Ocean's 8 tomorrow with a group of pals (this is just a sly way of me saying tomorrow is my birthday, yes I am shameless). I decided to focus on powerful women who are maybe also crooks today.
AKA female CEOs!
Not saying that women in business are crims, obviously, just saying that the corporate world is tough af.
So from day one of my investing, my plan has been to invest in female-led companies. As Iwrote in the first edition of BHMM (baby Amber had no idea how much work writing a newsletter was hahaha):
I want to invest in women-led companies (not just cause sexual harassment scandals aren't good for business), although I have not yet done so cause there are so few of them and I don't want to buy Pepsi stock cause it rots your teeth.
So far I have failed to do that very well!
One company I own actually IS run by a female, although honestly I had no damn idea until today. Mandy Ginsberg became the CEO of Match Group, the dating company that owns Match, Tinder and OK Cupid, last year (a man is the CEO of Tinder, are you surprised).
But I have tried to make decisions based on the breakdown of female management. For example, 51% of people in senior vice president positions are above at Estée Lauder (ET), which I own stock in, are women.
Estée Lauder mainly owns beauty brands aimed at women, so it should be more than 50% led by women tbh.
But as I mentioned on day one, finding a woman-led business to buy is not a super easy thing to do. Luckily as a journalist, I am very good at googling, so I found some stuff. So right now women hold 5% of the CEO roles of companies in the S&P 500.
Confusing term of the week: S&P 500 — this is an abbreviation of The Standard & Poor's 500, often shortened as the S&P 500, or even just the S&P. Basically it's an index of the top 500 largest companies publicly listed in the US. Standard & Poor's is the financial research company responsible for maintaining the index.
So, I found this great list of all the female CEOs of companies in the S&P 500 on Catalyst, and have shamelessly copied and pasted it for you, so you can check out which female-led companies you'd be into supporting.
Mary T. Barra, General Motors Co. (GM), Gail Boudreaux, Anthem Inc, Heather Bresch, Mylan N.V, Michele Buck, The Hershey Company, Debra A. Cafaro,Ventas, Inc., Safra A. Catz,Oracle Corp. (co-CEO), Mary Dillon, Ulta Beauty, Virginia Drosos, Signet Jewelers Limited, Adena Friedman, Nasdaq, Michelle Gass, Kohl's, Lynn J. Good, Duke Energy Corp., Tricia Griffith, The Progressive Corp, Marillyn A. Hewson, Lockheed Martin Corp, Vicki Hollub, Occidental Petroleum Corp, Patricia Kampling, Alliant Energy Corp, Margaret Keane, Synchrony Financial, Beth E. Mooney, KeyCorp, Indra K. Nooyi, PepsiCo, Inc., Phebe N. Novakovic, General Dynamics Corp, Patricia K. Poppe, CMS Energ, Barbara Rentler, Ross Stores, Inc, Virginia M. Rometty, International Business Machines (IBM) Corp, Susan N. Story, American Water Works Company, Inc, Geisha Williams, PG&E Corp.
I get that this block of text doesn't... tell you much, so I've gone through some of the companies, but not all of them, cause I am just one lady typing out a newsletter the night before her bday when she hasn't eaten dinner yet.Lockheed Martin make military weapons. General Motors makes Chevvys in Detroit. Oracle is a database company. Anthem is insurance (includes Blue Cross BlueShield Health insurance) and Progressive is car isnurance. Hershey's makes chocolate that tastes like vomit (I didn't make this up, I've thought this since a friend first brought a Hershey's kiss to Australia). PepsiCo makes Pepsi and a bunch of other junk food.
Signet Jewelers is based in Bermuda and is the world's biggest retailer of diamond jewelry. Kohl's is a huge retail chain, as is Ross Stores, both of them kinda crappy department stores. Mylan is a pharamcetucial company. Ventas is a real estate company but in the healthcare sector. Duke Energy, American Water Works Company and Occidental Petroleum sort of speak for themselves.
Can you tell that I'm not... overly excited by most of these female-led companies?So firstly a reminder that while CEOs who are women are proven to be very profitable for businesses... they aren't necessarily always leading businesses that you may want to invest in (honestly if I LIKED Hersheys or Pepsi products, I'd be into both of those companies, but alas).
And yes, Match's CEO doesn't make it on this list cause Match Group isn't part of the S&P 500, which is a reminder that there are a lot of other companies to look at not just these ones.The one female-led company from the S&P 500 I am most excited about is Ulta (ULTA), which is a like a suburban version of Sephora, a retail store of beauty brands. I also noted back in my very first BHMM that I wanted to invest in skincare, as well as female-led companies. Ulta is the perfect mix of these two, and I have been looking at them for MONTHS.When I nearly bought three stocks, they were $200 each. Now they are around $250. But they've had a turbulent year.
One tip my dad gave me, who loves choosing individual stocks based on companies he likes, is to check out their website and see how it was for online sales. It’s not a great site! It discouraged me. And the price kept floundering. Anyway, I didn’t buy ULTA, and then it jumped, and now I would maybe only be able to afford one perhaps two stocks right now. The advice here is dads don't know about beauty products.Do you factor female leadership or diverse leadership when you're choosing companies to invest in? Why or why not? What other rad female-led companies should I be buying stocks in? And my weekly reminder that if you open a Robinhood account, which lets you buy and sell stocks with zero fees, use my referral code and we both get a free share.And maybe this week is a good time to donate some cash to Catalyst, a global non-profit that works on improving workplaces for women and getting more women in positions of power.
Anyway, here's a check in of my stocks for the week:
Testimonials:From Nikita: "Just discovered your newsletter. LOVE! Thanks for writing it!" — thank you for reading, I love when new people join and try to write for a mix of both newbies and long-timers, does it work or not really?From Beatrix: "I am enjoying your newsletter a LOT and it is incredibly helpful." — please tell me all the stocks you're buying (or wanting to buy) Beatrix.From Whisk E. Clear: "This is the most brilliant effort I’ve ever seen on Twitter. I applaud your work, and willingness to put yourself out there. #GoodJob" — honestly I am not sure if this is a spam account or not, but I appreciate the hashtag and also your name, gonna drink myself a bday whiskey right now.
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Honestly, I think most of my subscribers come from a friend of a friend, share the wealth and the knowledge around so we all become rich. Or maybe just make the few female CEOs richer? I guess that's fine too.