Expertise and integrity are highly valued traits for people in our profession. Our founder has lived her professional and personal life this way since the beginning. A recent example of this came to light the other day.
Laura started her career with Paine Webber as a wire operator and was promoted to a branch operations manager to finally becoming a stockbroker. This is a remarkable feat considering it was the early eighties and Wall Street was pretty much an all-male club. Women were mostly secretaries or school teachers. Laura was a standout because of her hard work and her extensive knowledge. When she transitioned to becoming a broker, she did so believing that she could do better and help people more ethically. She was one of the few people that had performed all the duties from writing a trade ticket, transmitting it to the specialist's post on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, and reporting the execution of the trade. While she was a broker for Paine Webber in the Stevens Creek Branch in San Jose, she worked with a client who was relatively new to trading stocks and wanted to write contracts with advanced stock option strategies. Laura and he hit it off and she regularly wrote options contracts for this client. She was his “broker” and oftentimes as the old marketing tag line, he would say, “Thank you Paine Webber.”
Laura went to work for Charles Schwab to help expand the fast growing brokerage firm and was unable to take her clients with her. I am assuming this client got assigned to another broker and that was the end of the relationship, or was it? Two days ago, she heard from this client, he was going through his old papers and found statements that had her name on it. A quick search on the internet and he reached out to her. I am guessing expertise and integrity are not easily forgotten!
Mike.
Mike Mickels is President of CochranMickels Retirement Specialists and an avid sporting clay competitor. CochranMickels Retirement Specialists provides personalized planning and investment services to individuals approaching and in retirement. They also provide retirement and benefits training to Federal employees. Securities offered through Registered Representatives of Cambridge Investment Research, Inc., a broker-dealer, member FINRA/SIPC. Advisory services offered through Cambridge Investment Research Advisors, Inc, a Registered Investment Advisor. CochranMickels and Cambridge are not affiliated.