At 82, Ginny Clark, Managing Director of Trading at Beech Hill Securities, has seen Wall Street in its rawest form. Her career, spanning more than six decades, began in a world where women were almost invisible on the trading floor, and it would take persistence, wit, and relentless drive to carve out her place among the city’s financial giants.

When in 1969, Clark tried to enter the front door of the Harvard Club NYC as a guest of a fellow OU graduate who ran Skelly Oil commercial paper to which Salomon Brothers was trying to get as a client, she was stopped. Women were not allowed in through that entrance. In fact, she was told, “you can go home,” she said, adding that it was an all-male function.

The man who invited her thought it was supposed to be a cocktail party and asked her as a blind date. She responded to the Salomon group, “I didn’t get dressed up to be thrown out.”

The solution was improvised: the table was dragged halfway into the foyer, the only space where a woman was permitted to stand or sit. Half the meeting took place inside the dining room and half outside with Clark. Seated at that table was Billy Salomon, co-founder of Salomon Brothers.

At one point he looked at her and said, “Boy, I think we need a token woman. And what do you make?” She was earning $6,500 a year and, as she put it, was “so proud” of it. He offered $7,500. She declined.

“Let me think about it,” she told him. She recalled him saying, “I love a person that doesn’t take no.”

A month of negotiation followed. When he agreed to match the $15,000 salary the men were earning, she pushed again. “If I’m going to be a token, I want $20,000.” His response was: “Okay, start Monday.”

From Psychology to Finance

Clark joined Salomon Brothers in 1969, as their first woman in the training program and found herself sitting beside Michael Bloomberg, then a fellow trader, on a four-person block trading desk. There were only 360 employees at the firm when she arrived. The stock exchange paper tape clicked in front of them all day.

A 10,000-share block was considered large. “Now your retail account could be 10,000 shares,” she said. “But it was such a difference.”

She had no financial background (she majored in psychology), so she went to night school for seven years to learn finance while building her book.

“Back in those days, honestly, for me, to build a book, I was out every night,” she said. “Trying to either call or meet people.”

The culture was rough. She recalled that men in the training program were rewarded with perks; she was given a rabbit “to go get pregnant.” She brought the rabbit to work on a leash. “My rabbit was not going to die,” she said.

For years, rumors circulated that she was pregnant by whichever senior man she sat next to. The gossip, she said, “was rarely vicious, they were just challenging me.”

Billy Salomon later apologized to her for not publicly defending her. When he turned 100, Clark served as one of his Toastmasters.

After leaving Salomon, she moved through several firms. At Wertheim, her immediate boss told her she would have to sleep with him to get ahead. She reported it to senior management. Their response, she recalled, was: “You’re in a man’s world. You’ve got to face these things.” She resigned.

Bawdy Times

She joined Merrill Lynch in 1975, where on her first day three traders, including her boss Sam Hunter, Manager of Trading at Merrill Lynch, streaked in front of her at her desk in the trading room.

They stood naked and asked, “Can you handle it?” She looked down and replied, “I wish you guys were larger.” They laughed and said, “You know what, you’re going to be okay.” Hunter later became one of her closest friends.

Clark built every account herself. She cold-called relentlessly and spent nights at Harry’s Bar, where bankers and traders gathered. “None of them were given to me,” she said.

She became a top producer. But when bonus season came, and she should have had about a seven-figure payout, she was capped at $350,000. She said she was told directly: “You’re a woman. You don’t need the money the men do. You should be happy you’re being paid more than any other woman.”

Sam Hunter, who was now the Manager of Trading at Drexel Burnham, knew of the situation at Merrill and offered her a seven-figure package to run the New York desk at Drexel Burnham Lambert.

Merrill Lynch sued to block her move under a non-solicitation clause. Clark reminded senior leadership that she had never sued despite enduring public insults over loudspeakers and years of documented hostility. The chairman told her she was the firm’s “Pied Piper,” the only female block trader, and they didn’t want to lose her. She was warned that the firm could tie her up in litigation for two years; thus, she resigned after 11 years.

Drexel stated they would hold the position open for the six months during which the non-solicitation clause was negotiated at. She then took a $100,000 position at Steinberg Asset Management as their trader for the hedge fund and value fund, with the understanding that it would be for six months to satisfy the non-compete clause. They also had a small broker-dealer arm.

However, at the end of the six months, rumors emerged that Drexel was having problems and was about to collapse. She could go back to Merrill, go to another brokerage house, as Goldman was interested, or stay with Steinberg and start over again, she said.

Now, starting on the buy-side at $100,000, down from seven-figure expectations, one had to believe one could succeed, Clark said.

“That was scary,” she said, “but it was my best decision, as it worked out.” She had just bought a house in the Hamptons and ended a relationship. She chose, as she described it, “the high road,” and rebuilt.

In the late 1980s, while with Steinberg Asset Management, she asked if she could develop their brokerage business, as they had a license that was not being used. Sixteen years later, in 2002, she moved her book over to Beech Hill Securities when Steinberg merged with another money manager, where she remained Managing Director of Trading more than two decades later.

It was when she was with Steinberg, they asked her to go see some of the shipping stocks they owned in Norway. During that trip she met many brokers from various Norwegian firms and realized they were being underserved in U.S. markets. Even overseas, they were surprised to see a woman, she said.

Clark built a niche serving European clients whose markets closed at 10:30 a.m.–11:30 a.m. New York time and started a successful 15a-6 business. She acted as their “eyes and ears.” “I was once again a trader,” she said. “I had to work their orders.”

Clark traded through crashes and revolutions in technology. When she began, she worked every order by hand, calling the floor and making judgment calls.

‘Algo Machine’

“I was the algo machine,” she said. She used algorithms later but pulled portions out to work herself. “My clients weren’t demanding algos. They gave me the orders and said, ‘Make me proud.’”

She worries that artificial intelligence and shrinking commissions will hollow out sales trading. “When the commissions are pennies… it’s not a good business,” she said. Research, she added, is increasingly automated. “I could go into AI and get great research.”

She believes male colleagues can be critical mentors and allies if mutual trust exists. “Your men basically can be your best supporters and your best mentors.”

But she drew a clear boundary: inappropriate demands—“anything like Epstein,” she said—must not be tolerated. She herself reported misconduct and, when necessary, walked away.

All her mentors were men. She credited Artie Crames, senior trader at Bear Stearns, for introducing her to major bank accounts after seeing how hard she worked. “If I didn’t have him, I wouldn’t have gotten into the banks,” she said.

That support helped her land accounts with Chemical Bank, Mellon Bank, Bank of NY, Lord Abbett, and other institutions in Georgia and Hartford, eventually generating millions in the first few years of trading revenue.

Despite everything, she believed she had more support than hostility. Her peers nicknamed her “Doris Day” for her below-the-knee skirts and pearls. She never used drugs and rarely drank.

She became the first female president of the Investment Association of NY and, by virtue of that role, the first woman admitted into an elite Bond Club, where she was asked to sign a nondisclosure agreement for their evening events.

“I wouldn’t have traded my days,” she said. “As many crazy days that happened, there were so many better days.”

She still plays golf, works with a trainer, and takes stretch classes to stay fit. Her European clients call her “Queen Ginny.” Many were once young traders she had known for decades; she had attended their weddings and was the adopted godmother to some of their children.

“If I wasn’t working, I think I’d be lost,” she concluded.

(This article first appeared as FLASH FRIDAY on Traders Magazine, a Markets Media Group publication.)