Earlier this year, after several years of working in relative anonymity, I decided to publicly (albeit quietly) launch a woman-owned and operated LIVE Trading Room and Macro-to-Micro Investment Newsletter. I didn’t think, “Wow, as a woman in this male-dominated industry, I’ll make a killing meeting the needs of under-represented women investors!” Nope, that didn’t drive me. Neither did the idea that I needed to create change in a profession where female professional traders let alone trader education services offered by women are grossly unrepresented. I just knew it was time for me to stretch outside of my comfort zone, be bold and walk into the tunnel toward the light–hopeful it was the light at the end of the tunnel and not an oncoming train.
Something I have learned while walking in the tunnel alone is that there are a lot of pro traders who are women walking alongside me in the shadows. One was Sarah Potter who caught my attention early in my ‘twitter career’ as she too was a self-taught trading mom running/promoting an options trading education service based on her winning performance and desire to help others. She recently wrote an article on how we can be our own hero: Working In A Male-Dominated Industry Helped Me Find My Purpose. It inspired me to search through my twitter feed for other Female Pro Traders (versus women in finance such as economists, journalists, analysts, hedge fund managers etc). My list is biased of course as I only follow those I respect both for their content as well as their humility (not attention-seeking ‘bragging alphas’ like so many of the male traders on twitter and beyond). My list is also limited by my time spent researching twitter not the WWW, but I think it is pretty representative, and sadly, not lengthy. I find it shocking that I could only find 15 women running trader education subscription services in a world of trader education sites that pop up like daisies, daily, by men.
Privilege Is Invisible To Those Who Have It
When I took up trading, I knew I would learn to fish much sooner if I learned from the Pros. I actively sought out and shadowed very successful, pedigreed money-managers as well as highly-profitable, retail-rogue, super traders. I quickly found out that very few women fish professionally. I am not a quant researcher so I have no stats to offer up on what percentage of women are professional traders let alone percentage of women who manage their discretionary money in the market. I have no drum to beat around women being ‘better traders’ than men. It is my personal observation that most semi- to professional traders—and that runs the gambit from trading educators, social media stars and bloggers—are men.
