Every time I see a photo of a Wall Street trading floor — people shouting maniacally, looking ecstatic or glum or whatever — I think: Wow. That’s a lot of testosterone. Where are the women?
Perhaps the only place with fewer females is an NFL locker room. Then again, they allow women reporters.
But Johanna Rossi is part of an exceedingly rare breed. The Westporter is a senior trader with Alden Global Capital.
Johanna Rossi (seated).
She’s obviously at the top of her game. Traders Magazine just named her “Trailblazer of the Year,” in its “Wall Street Women Awards” issue.
At age 4, Traders says, her father taught her how to read stock quotes in the newspaper. She checked his portfolio daily.
Four decades later, she specializes in trading distressed securities. Now, though, she manages Alden’s domestic desk of approximately $1.8 billion in assets.
Her passion helped her overcome the perception that women could not be traders. After earning an MBA in corporate finance at Fairleigh Dickinson, she survived 12 interviews to land a job at NatWest Bank.
Rossi’s next job was as an international equity trader at Oppenheimer Capital. She joined Alden Capital in 2003. Today she handles “best execution in myriad asset classes such as U.S./international equity, U.S./international debt, program trading, forex, options and commodities.”
She loves her work so much, Traders says, “if she could trade washing machines, she’d do it.”
Johanna Rossi
As part of her award, she will bang the gavel at the New York Stock Exchange. The date is December 26.
Uh-oh. The day after Christmas is by far one of the slowest trading days of the year.
You think they’d give that slot to a man?
