The Greatest Female Investor You’ve Never Heard Of

Even though a lot of things have changed over the last few decades, the investment industry still remains male-dominated world. Still, there are a number of successful women investors we can take inspiration from.

In this article, we are going to talk about one of the pioneers in the industry. A woman that broke the barriers in finance. We are going to talk about Geraldine Weiss.

In year 1966, Geraldine Weiss became the first female to start a career in investment advisory services. She was very successful in her job. She graduated in business and finance from the University of California, Berkeley.

However, Weiss found it difficult to find a good job in the field because most of the firms only hired women in secretarial roles. Even though Weiss had the experience and educational background, no one would hire her. She famously quoted: 

“It was a man’s world, and women need not apply.”

Geraldine Weiss

Tired of being rejected over and over again, in 1966, at the age of 40, she decided to start her own investment newsletter. In order to improve her chances of success, she began signing her newsletters as “G. Weiss” in order to avoid further discrimination.

One of her readers once sent her a letter which said:

“I can’t imagine myself ever taking investment advice from a woman. Unless you take your advice from a man”

Weiss investment philosophy was based around value-investing and dividend-oriented stock picking. Her strategy outperformed other newsletters at the time.

Weiss became known in the industry as the “blue chip stock guru”. She was also referred as the “Dividend Detector”. Weiss had a reputation of finding the best stocks that delivered great dividends. She was a true believer that dividends were the ultimate driver of investing because they are the clearest connector between the stock price and business performance.

Over the last 30 years, her investment newsletter recommendations have returned 11.2% per year. This is higher than the overall market which returned 9.8% over the same period.