FLASHBACK FRIDAY: LEADING FEMALE VALUE INVESTORS

In another edition of Flashback Friday, Forexpedia will put the spotlight on the top female value investors. Meet the market mavens Mariko Gordon, Renee Haugerud, and Irene Bergman.

Mariko Gordon

Upon leaving the portals of Princeton University, her first job was a Manning & Napier apprentice. Mariko Gordon then worked at Royce & Associate, which forever changed her trading perspective when her boss stood calmly by the trader’s desk purchasing stocks continuously in the wake of the 1987 crash.

The comparative literature major went on to establish Daruma Capital Management in 1995, having zero assets under its helm (it how holds various assets amounting to $2.1 billion). Gordon wanted to form an investment company in which money management would never intercept with her being a portfolio manager. Her investment philosophy is to find out firms that have ongoing optimistic change in its fundamentals. Gordon mastered the art of overseeing not more than 35 small-cap stocks in her portfolio.

A good money manager, according to Gordon, can be summarized in six traits: capacity to accept and avert risks, fearlessness, hard work, thrift, intellectual curiosity, and resilience.

Renee Haugerud

It was her father, a part-time farmer and local sheriff, who taught Renee Haugerud the concept of calls and puts, as well as supply and demand. Growing up in a farm, her experience revved up her drive to know the brass tacks of commodity trading.

A University of Montana alumna, she was first a commodity trader at Cargill. Haugerud also worked at other firms before founding Galtere International in 1997. The global macro fund is much familiar with how commodity fundamentals can shape other asset classes by looking through commodity lens. The rationale behind the fund’s focus is that the commodity was the first derivative traded in the world, being the first and oldest global currency.

Having a value-oriented outlook, the veteran trader postulates commodities will stand out and conventional paper products will underperform. The Galtere founder once stipulated agricultural commodities and farmland will exhibit better performances than its rivals. She also said the market is gradually inching away from trends seen 30 years ago.

Irene Bergman

The Wall Street veteran once dreamt of following the footsteps of his father as a private banker on the Berlin Stock Exchange. However, the heaven has other plans for Irene Bergman. The Nazis, at the onset of World War II, caused her family to run away from Germany and live in Holland. In 1942, they moved to the United States and she started working as a bank secretary. She also used to work at Hallgarten & Co. and Stralem & Co. The latter was the first workplace in which she felt how to be treated as an equal.

Bergman has undergone multiple business cycles, depressions, historical events, and recessions, not to mention her instinct to figure out where things are going. Her family took them 10 years to recuperate their wealth after American and Dutch authorities froze their assets. Cutting the story short, her post-World War II life taught Bergman one valuable lesson – to protect funds.

The seasoned trader often tells all aspiring traders to never do anything stupid and making their own decisions. The Stralem financial adviser recalled one big investment opportunity that she let slip away, saying Apple was too huge for her.