Norma Yaeger, Wall Street trailblazer who broke NYSE barriers, dies at 96

Norma Yaeger died June 3 at 96. In 1962, she became the first woman to enroll in Hornblower & Weeks’ stockbroker training program, then won the right to join her male trainees on the exchange floor, where many men assumed any woman they saw was a secretary.

Yaeger’s route into finance was shaped by family strain as much as ambition. She married young, had three children and later left a troubled marriage after her husband lost his job about 10 years into the marriage. She had studied business at City University of New York’s Bernard Baruch College, and she said she turned to Wall Street because she needed to support her family. In an era when women were still effectively shut out of bank accounts, credit cards and checking accounts, she described sexism as a constant feature of her early career.

Yaeger entered the profession in 1962, but the NYSE did not allow women to step foot on the floor until she forced the issue. The first woman to trade stocks on that floor did not appear until 1976.

After moving to California, Yaeger kept building. She founded Yaeger Securities, Inc. in 1981 and Yaeger Capital Markets in 1991, the second firm created after affirmative action legislation in California. At one point, Yaeger Capital Markets brokered investments for the California Public Employees’ Retirement System. In 2013, she published Breaking Down the Walls: 50 Courageous & Successful Years at the Forefront of the Women’s Movement, a book that traced her NYSE license in 1962, her fight for equal pay and her years on the exchange floor.

Yaeger was born May 5, 1930, and lived in Northridge, California.