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It may fall short of being an actual genetic defect, but whatever it is about men that prevents them from asking for driving directions apparently impairs their investing abilities as well, at least when compared to women. Or at least that's one interpretation from a study that finds women make fewer investing mistakes than men.

Merrill Lynch last year sponsored a poll of 500 men and 500 women about their investing attitudes, beliefs, levels of knowledge and mistakes. Among the company's findings:

• Women are far less likely than men to hold a losing investment too long (35 percent of women reported having done so at least once vs. 47 percent of men) or wait too long to sell a winning investment (28 percent women vs. 43 percent men).
• Men are also more likely than women to allocate too much to one investment (32 percent men vs. 23 percent women), buy a hot investment without doing any research (24 percent vs. 13 percent) and trade securities too often (12 percent vs. 5 percent).
• Of men who reported buying a stock without doing any research, 63 percent said they did it again, whereas only 47 percent of women repeated the mistake. Nearly half (48 percent) of all women who waited too long to sell an investment did it again, but 61 percent of men repeated the mistake. And among men who ignored the tax consequences of an investment decision, 68 percent did it more than once while only 47 percent of women did.
• A significantly greater percentage of women (47 percent) than men (30 percent) report not being knowledgeable about investing.
• Yet women are more likely than men to describe themselves as a "very successful" investor (19 percent to 14 percent) and are more likely to say they do a "very good" job of managing their investments (34 percent to 25 percent).
• Men enjoy investing more than women (69 percent vs. 55 percent). This is reflected in the fact that 60 percent of women say they prefer to spend as little time as possible managing their investments (vs. 49 percent of men).
• Asked about the emotions that played a role in the investment mistakes they'd made, men are more likely than women to cite greed (32 percent of men vs. 16 percent of women), overconfidence (33 percent vs. 20 percent) and impatience (28 percent vs. 19 percent).

The poll was conducted by the research firm of Mathew Greenwald & Associates. Participants had to be solely or jointly responsible for financial and investment decisions for their household, and have at least $75,000 in investable assets and an annual household income of at least $75,000 (retirees did not have to meet this requirement). The margin of error (at the 95 percent confidence level) for the 1,000 investors surveyed is plus or minus 3 percentage points. The margin of error (at the 95 percent confidence level) for the single-sex responses is plus or minus 4.4 percentage points.