"The Witch of Wall Street," America’s richest and most miserly woman
The richest woman of America’s Gilded Age, called "the Witch of Wall Street." In an age when women were all but wholly shut out of finance, she braved Wall Street alone on the strength of an outstanding investing eye: following a contrarian strategy of "buy when others panic," she calmly bought quality bonds and real estate in bulk when markets crashed and everyone sold, amassing a huge fortune by sound value investing. Her investing philosophy was almost the forerunner of Buffett’s decades later. Yet she was famed for extreme miserliness — worth a fortune, she wore rags, lived in cheap apartments, and haggled to save pennies — a legendary figure full of contradiction.
Whenever a financial panic struck, the market crashed, and the crowd fled for the exits, Hetty Green went in with cash, calmly buying up the quality assets others sold in fear. She even lent money to the City of New York in a crisis. This contrarian investing of "be greedy when others are fearful" preceded Buffett by more than half a century. A woman spurned by her age, applying the plainest principles of value investing, laughed last.
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