Money and investing have traditionally been dominated by (white) men. But there have been and are successful female investors, though they are often overlooked, forgotten about or judged by a different standard. Hetty Green is one such women.
WHO WAS HETTY GREEN?
Hetty Green (née Henrietta Howland Robinson) was a shrewd, confident and no-nonsense investor who was once the richest woman in America.
From a wealthy whaling family, her father was initially enraged that his wife did not give him the son he wanted to mentor. At two years old she was sent way to live with her grandfather and aunt. By the age of six she excelled at maths and reading and was reading the daily papers to her grandfather and father, then accompanying them on the waterfront where they ran their business. As she gained her father’s approval he also taught her accountancy and trading stocks.
Hetty attended a strict Quaker boarding school when she was 10 and finished her formal education with three years at a Boston finishing school. There she followed a curriculum of both academic study and social etiquette to prepare her to be a debutante.
She married at 33 creating an early example of a pre-nuptial agreement so that by mutual consent their finances were kept separate. Edward Green was known to be a speculative investor and lived an extravagant lifestyle.
She bailed him out of debt on a number of occasions. When she found out he was planning to use $550,000 of her money to cover a loss without her consent she separated from him which was unheard of at the time.
After her separation she began a new life as an investor, creating her vast fortune with a clear strategy and discipline. Hetty held onto her shares when people were panic selling and buying them when they were cheap. Green is often considered a pioneer of value investing, famously practised by current-day billionaire Warren Buffett.
Hetty always made sure she had a large amount of cash available for lending purposes. In the Bank Panic of 1907 she was able to avoid financial disaster herself and bail out New York City and many other investors.
Both her father and her grandfather had steeped Hetty Green in business and finance from childhood, and she devoted her life to increasing her fortune. She became a major and feared operator on Wall Street, where, in addition to extensive holdings in railroad and other stocks and in government bonds, she maintained a considerable liquid fund for lending purposes. In the aftermath of the panic of 1907, a number of major investors found themselves in her debt. She also invested heavily in mortgages and real estate, particularly in Chicago.
THE ‘WITCH OF WALL STREET’ OR THE ‘QUEEN OF WALL STREET’?
Hetty Green was a Quaker and lived abstemiously and frugally. After her husband’s death she chose to wear black until she died. This gave rise to her being known as the Witch of Wall Street while The Guinness World Records named her the world’s greatest miser.
When she died in 1916 she had created an estate of $100 million, about $2.4 billion in today’s money. Her investment advice was regularly sought by men leading her to be given another, more palatable name by the press – the ‘Queen of Wall Street’. It is interesting that this is not the one that she is remembered by.
Column Padding here is on the right
but click on the tablet and mobile symbols (to the right of the words Column padding) and change “inherit” to “none”
In the RHS column, padding is on the left…
You might decide you only want one or the other, not both.
Margins round image
Putting a margin round the image will make the image smaller, because it still has to fit into the same space
Gaps between columns
A better way, I think is to add padding to the column – to the left in this column and to the right in the left hand column – see the row above this one… This is also better because on mobile you can remove the padding as these elements will stack ontop of one aother so the padding is not needed.