Trader Hetty Green. The stingiest woman in the world
It is quite difficult to imagine a successful investor and trader who would be careless with money.
Indeed, to successfully survive in the stock market, as well as in the field of investing, it is very important to be meticulous about spending. Moreover, in any investment guide, you will certainly find instructions on the correct saving and increasing of money.
However, sometimes human stinginess simply knows no bounds, despite the fact that there are millions of dollars in bank accounts.
Of course, history knows many examples of millionaires and billionaires living quite modestly and trying not to stand out from the crowd, but Hetty Green's greed and stinginess were so great that a film was even made based on her biography.
In this article, you'll learn about the biography of one of the most successful female traders in history, who, despite her wealth and success, left only a negative legacy.
It is also worth noting that my father owned an entire harbor with a dozen ships that were rented out to whale hunters and fishermen.
However, no one would dare to call Hetty Green's childhood a paradise, since her mother was constantly ill, and her father, due to a lack of time and a bad character, was almost completely absent from his daughter's upbringing.
The only time Hetty spent time with her father was when she was doing the bookkeeping, as she had phenomenal mathematical abilities.
She studied the financial reports in such detail that the slightest theft or irregularity in the business could not have escaped her notice.
Hetty Green's Education
When Hetty Green turned 15, her parents decided to send their daughter to a Boston private school for a well-rounded education.
It was there that Green's true character and disposition became apparent, as she was completely unable to find common ground with anyone. Moreover, in order to achieve her goals, she not only engaged in verbal altercations, but also allowed herself to raise her hand against other male and female students.
When it comes to her studies, she was only good at mathematics and the exact sciences, while other subjects were no good at all.
Therefore, due to her bad character and terrible academic performance, Hetty had to leave school and take simple accounting courses, which she easily completed.
First Shares. The Fight for the Inheritance
Hetty Green led a very frugal lifestyle from her youth, dressing modestly and saving every penny.
One day, a father sent his daughter to Boston and gave her exactly one thousand dollars for living expenses, entertainment, and clothes. However, a month later, Hetty Green arrived wearing exactly the same clothes she'd left, proudly displaying exactly one thousand dollars' worth of stock.
Her financial career took a huge leap forward after her father's death. In his will, he left the entire whaling business to his sons, but at the same time, he gave his daughter a huge sum of money, several million dollars.
Naturally, the sons disagreed with this arrangement and began demanding money. Hetty Green reacted very harshly, threatening to kill them, and to prove her point, she burned several ships on the waterfront.
Hetty Green invested all of her inheritance in United States government bonds.
Some time later, her aunt died and left her only $65,000 in her will, despite actually possessing a vast fortune. Hetty Green created a fake will and took it to court, demanding $2 million.
In exchange for the sum she received, she receives a refusal and, what's more, an accusation of fraud, which forces her to flee with her husband to Great Britain.
A stunning success. Greed knows no bounds
After arriving in London, Hetty Green pulled off a brilliant currency operation, specifically betting on the pound's decline by betting on the dollar. In the year following the end of the war, the dollar strengthened significantly, and Hetty Green earned her first million.
She began to actively invest the money she earned in shares of railway companies, the prices of which were growing by leaps and bounds due to the fact that new roads were being built throughout the country and new small towns were appearing.
However, her most phenomenal success came during the severe crisis and collapse of stock prices in 1907, when Hetty Green became the largest creditor of many stock companies and brokers, and also bought up shares and government debt en masse for next to nothing.
The most interesting thing is that, even though she was a millionaire, Hetty Green was a very stingy and greedy woman.
One day, her son broke his leg and instead of taking him to a private clinic and paying the doctor, she pretended to be homeless and took the boy to all the free clinics and demanded that they treat him for free.
Naturally, everyone sent the woman with a million-dollar income away and twirled their fingers at their temples, but because she gave the boy painkillers for a whole week and he did not receive medical care, his leg had to be amputated.
Hetty Green died during an argument with a maid, demanding that she take the full-fat kefir to the store and buy the cheap, low-fat kind, but this time with the maid's money. Her son quickly squandered and drank away half of his mother's inheritance.
If you convert her income into modern dollars, she had a capital of more than 2 billion dollars, but not a penny of this money went to charity, and her entire fortune was squandered by her illiterate son.
