Warren Buffett is one of the leading names in investing on Wall Street. The 94-year-old “Oracle of Omaha” has earned the respect of investors with his frugality and thoughtful investment style.
But Buffett is not the first investor with this profile to make a fortune on Wall Street. 100 years ago Hetty Green already The first female millionaire to invest on Wall Street.
Hetty Green has a natural talent for investing
According to journalist and historian Charles Slack, author of Green’s biography‘Hetty: The genius and madness of America’s first female emperor’ Hetty Green can be considered the first businessman in US history and had the honor of being named the “World’s Biggest Miser” in the Guinness Book of World Records, according to a 2014 article about Hetty Green’s death. New York Times In 1916.
“He was connected to people like Russell Sage, J.P. Morgan, John D. Rockefeller, and other financiers and tycoons of the time,” wrote Business Reference expert Ellen Terrell, writing for the U.S. Library of Congress.
Hetty Green was born Henrietta Howland Robinson on November 21, 1834, in New Bedford, Massachusetts. Hetty was born into a wealthy family that made a fortune in the whaling industry, according to digitized documents from the U.S. Nature Park Service. His mother was Abby Slocum Howland, the daughter of Gideon Howland, a wealthy whaling fleet owner, and his father, Edward Mott Robinson, was his father-in-law’s business partner.
Accordingly Historic Women of the SouthCoastHis father always wanted a son to teach him how to run the family business. When Hetty was two years old, her mother became ill and they decided to send her to live with her grandfather and her aunt, Sylvia Ann Howland.
Young Hetty began to develop with her grandfather Growing interest in business and financeHe cleared all his doubts by encouraging him to read books and articles on economics. When she was eight years old, Hetty opened a bank account with the nickels she saved from tips and treats for good behavior. Hetty began accompanying her grandfather and father to take care of their business at the port.
By observing its financial strength, his grandfather taught him to read accounting books and trading shares. When his grandfather died, his father became the main shareholder of the company, because he owned his share as a partner and also controlled his wife’s inheritance.
Upon her father’s death, Hetty inherited the estate. $900,000 and $5 million trust. Two weeks later, his aunt, Sylvia Ann Howland, with whom he had lived since childhood, died.
His aunt stated in her will that 50 percent of her inheritance should be allocated to charity. 50% in the form of investment It would take the form of a trust for Hetty but would be administered by her doctor. Not wanting to leave an inheritance was not invented by 21st century millionaires.
In 1867, Hetty married Edward Henry Green, a wealthy Vermont businessman, and the couple had two children, Edward and Sylvia.
The lessons she learned from her grandfather and father enabled Hetty to have her fiancé sign a prenuptial agreement before the wedding. As the Museum of American Finance emphasizes, this was a protective measure against her future husband’s taste for high-risk investing.
Investor at all costs
In the context of the late 19th century, Hetty did not have control over the family assets, so she managed to invest with available resources and bet on trends against the market: buying when stock prices were low and selling when they were low. above.
This investment strategy, which is now the general norm, was not so in the last years of the 19th century. In fact, the importance of the change in investment strategy used by Hetty Green has been the subject of scientific studies.
Green’s technique for deciding where to invest the scarce resources he was allowed to operate was to study companies, read about them, and question them before making decisions about his investments. While he was doing this, he just stayed put and let time do its thing. The strategy is more than 120 years old, but it details Warren Buffett’s investment methods.
20 years after the death of his father and aunt Sylvia, Hetty multiplied her fortune by 10 betting on stable securities he inherited, such as real estate, government bonds, or investments in an expanding railroad.
Inside BBC They say that the millionaire had a great vision of the future when he predicted the banking crisis of 1907, amassing large amounts of cash before it exploded and banks closed off credit flows. The millionaire increased his wealth by giving loans. Its debtors included New York City, which received a million-dollar loan.
Plain character and abandoned appearance
Despite her enormous assets for the time, Hetty Green did not flaunt her wealth. New York Times She posted that she wore black and old, dirty clothes until they turned into rags. “By almost all reports he was a thoroughly unpleasant, greedy, rude and often downright dirty person,” the New York newspaper emphasized.
His reputation as a tough guy was supported by the fact that instead of living in a large house surrounded by luxury as expected of a millionaire, Green always lived in small, cheap apartments “to avoid residing and paying taxes”. an article New England Historical Society.
This text puts Hetty’s extraordinary investment skill and determination for her time in context. “People were not accustomed to a woman managing her investments exceptionally well, at a time when women were not to be trusted with money,” the New England Historical Society text states. “In the end, his greatest crime seems to have been choosing to live by his own rules rather than those of society,” Charles Slack said in his biography.
Hetty Gren died of a stroke in 1916 at the age of 81. Accordingly New York Social DiariesAt the time of his death, his assets were $200 million, approximately 7 billion dollars although today there are differences in the assessment of his wealth.
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Image | US Library of Congress