Although finance is still a largely male-dominated area of expertise, women are slowly but surely breaking the glass ceiling in this highly competitive industry. Here are some of the female pioneers of the field that have opened the gates for female traders across the globe.
Muriel Siebert
The first-ever female owner of a brokerage company, she founded Muriel Siebert & Co. in 1967. Working her way up from an entry-level job in finance, this lady trailblazer faced many challenges in the chauvinistic world of mid-20th-century brokerage. She even had difficulty getting her firm registered on the New York Stock Exchange – that’s how difficult times were for women in those days.
She stayed strong in the business, always on the cutting edge of financial concepts at the time. Not stopping there, she even made a career in politics, another male-dominated field. Siebert was the superintendent of the New York State Banking Department.
Truly an inspiration for women in finance worldwide, Muriel Siebert passed away in 2013.
Geraldine Weiss
Another old-school trailblazer, Geraldine Weiss, started an investment newsletter in 1966. In order to conceal her gender, she signed the newsletter simply as ‘G. Weiss’. She rightly believed that, at the time, no one would subscribe to a financial newsletter written by a woman. She was forty years old when she started her business.
By the time the cat was let out of the bag and her true identity was revealed, her newsletter subscribers found her insights so powerful and useful they didn’t care which gender she was.
Mellody Hobson
In 2015, Time magazine put this investment firm’s co-CEO on their 100 most influential people in the world. Building a highly admirable career up from a summer internship, Mellody is a world-renowned financial expert and a loud proponent of financial literacy.
Currently, she is chairwoman of the board at Starbucks, and she held the same position in DreamWorks Animation. However, her biggest achievement is reaching the co-CEO position at Chicago-based Ariel Investments. She had been president there since 2000 before being named co-CEO in 2019.
Mary Callahan Erdoes
Fulfilling her duties as the CEO of JP Morgan Asset and Wealth Management, Mary Callahan Erdoes oversees the managing of assets worth $2.8 trillion. Like most female financial superstars, she had to climb her way up from the very bottom of the totem pole, starting at what she calls ‘a glorified mailroom job’.
A sharp decision-maker with an astute awareness of the current state of the market, Erdoes is known for decisively cutting ties with failed investments. She and her team are known for quickly closing funds, as well as quickly finding new investment opportunities.
Forbes Magazine named her the 66th most powerful person in the world in 2014.
Abby Joseph Cohen
Abby Joseph Cohen became a superstar in the financial world when her predictions of the 1990s bull market turned out to be accurate. She held high-level positions in many of the world’s top brokerage companies, including Goldman Sachs, where she became a partner in 1998.
Retired as of 2021, she ended her career as president and chief strategist of Goldman’s Global Market Institute. Now, Mellody Hobson teaches business at Columbia University.
What makes a good trader?
If you’re looking to start a career in the stock market, here are some things you need to adopt in order to maximize your chances of success in this highly competitive, male-dominated industry.
Discipline
Knowing what to do and actually doing it are two separate skills. A great trader needs to get a grip on both – conjure up a strategy and religiously stick to it until you have enough of a sample size to decide whether it was successful or not.
Patience
This one directly ties in with the previous point – patience requires discipline, the lack of rash moves and reflex reactions. Waiting for the opportune moment while closely monitoring the trading signals is a key strategy for long-term success in the business.
Confidence
This is where society fails women the most – we teach boys to be confident and determined even when they’re clearly in the wrong, while we advise girls to be timid, and cautious and always reexamine their decisions.
A good trader needs to be confident in their decision, as fear and flakiness are the enemy of a determined professional. If you think a certain move is correct – step out and make it.
Positive thinking
Trading is a sort of divination of the future – we invest money because we believe an idea will work. That’s not to say that we always need to maintain a bullish outlook. It means that we should always believe that the next great opportunity is right around the corner.
Just like the sunshine after the rain, a bear market is always followed by a bull market. You need to be ready and anticipate a good trade. You can’t do that with a negative outlook.
Self-education and curiosity
There’s a sea of knowledge out there to absorb. It’s a vast sea – you can never get to the bottom of it. Set aside time in your schedule for reading, researching, and studying the various aspects of the financial world.
Good traders carry this attitude into their business – if you want to truly succeed, you need to be on the cutting edge. Trading is an ever-expanding and ever-changing landscape with new approaches to how things are done cropping up almost daily. A stagnant trader without the thirst for knowledge is bound to get outpaced and outmaneuvered and ultimately out profited by the competition.
Conclusion
After centuries, even millennia, of having their intelligence and abilities questioned and negated, women are finally taking a stance – we can do anything you can, and we can do it wearing high heels.
The financial world is one of the last frontiers of the male-dominated world – a macho playground typically closed off women. We hope you take inspiration from this article and the heroines that walked so we could run. Run businesses that is.
About The Author
Stacey is a freelance writer living in Minnesota with her cat, and she’s passionate about yoga, languages, home improvement, and drinking strong coffee. Find her on Twitter @StaceyShann0n