Taking Stock of Marina

There's a stolid E. F. Hutton office a block from the Atlantic on the eastern coast of Florida, where the sun turns the air to steam every afternoon. Bright-shirted families trundle metal pails and folding chairs down the sidewalk that leads to the beach; one keeps expecting the people to stop and lean toward the building, trying to eavesdrop on the financiers inside.

The walls in the Hutton lobby are dark mahogany. An electronic ticker-tape readout marches across one wall, flashing bright-green decimals that look like the scores at a basketball game. Down the hall, in one of the tasteful offices, a mahogany desk bears one stockbroker's accessories--financial statements and annual reports, a blinking computer monitor, a calendar turned to the correct date and two pink roses in a delicate vase. The triangular name plate reads, Marina Verola.

"I always have flowers on my desk," she says, rocking her chair forward to punch instructions into the computer. Her suit is navy blue. Her white blouse ties in a knot at the base of her neck. "And I wear business suits at work. That's what I expect of the secretaries, too. I don't like jeans."

What she does like is money. She likes making it, spending a little of it and, most of all, managing it for clients across the United States and in five foreign countries. "Money turns me on. My parents both lost most of what they had. I was raised--I can't say poor but very limited as far as money was concerned. When I chose to study business, money was the driving factor. I wanted to work with it and to manage it well."

Marina has been realizing both ambitions every weekday for five years now. There aren't many other women who have done the same. Women account for only a tiny percentage of the country's more than 100,000 brokers; they get mistaken for their receptionists more often than for their colleagues. When Marina was posing for us on Wall Street, two men in business suits walked past. One of them commented to the other, "Look at that beautiful model. They give her The Wall Street Journal, like she really knows what she's doing."

She fought back the impulse to roll up the newspaper and tell the man what to do with it, but stereotypes like that do annoy her. "Women have come a long way in the business world," she says, "but we're still in the tunnel looking for the light at the other end."

At 29, a successful broker for one of the nation's largest broker age firms, she seems already to have reached the other end. But the business biz wasn't always so bullish on Marina and her family. Her father, a Russian historian and theologian who published 40-odd books and spoke seven languages (English not among them), was once a well-to-do officer in the czar's army. He lost everything but his life in the revolution. The day before his scheduled execution, he escaped from a concentration camp and made his way to Switzerland. Eventually, he followed Marina's mother, also a Russian émigrée, to the United States. Marina was born seven years later, while her father was teaching at a seminary in Pennsylvania. "He'd come home to Long Island by bus on Friday night," she remembers, "and leave again on Sunday night."

Marina eased her way through high school and went to college in Long Island on a scholarship. It was there that she decided to go into wheeling and dealing (literally--these days, she drives to work in either her 'Vette or her Lincoln Continental). She changed her major from premed, graduated in business administration and began paying her dues.

Working for a company of ten brokers, she studied on weekends to become a broker herself. "Eventually, one of them recommended me to a big producer who wanted a girl to work just for him. I really catered to him and his clients. I handled the accounts while he was on the golf course, and the clients would bring me flowers and candy. Finally, I took the exchange's registered-rep test (continued on page 188) Stockbroker (continued from page 86) and got my license."

She speaks quickly and precisely, like someone who doesn't have a lot of time. Married to another Hutton broker, mother of seven-year-old Michael and nine-year-old Natasha, she has more to mind than money. She hustles the kids to school at eight every morning, then by 8:30 is in the office, where she'll spend an hour and a half preparing for the market's bell at ten. During the day, she'll review the prior day's trading, check her clients' positions, read recommendations on various prospective concerns and decide whether or not to suggest them to clients.

"I don't watch the ticker," she explains. "I have my own machine here at the desk. There are about 36 stocks and options I watch on the monitor. They stay right up to the minute. From here, I can punch up any stock at all--let's say Playboy." She types the call-up and the numbers appear on her screen. "On Friday, for instance, Playboy closed seven to seven and an eighth. The last trade was seven--the volume was 11,200. Opened at seven, closed at seven. The high for the day was seven and an eighth; the low was six and seven eighths. The last trade was at 3:50, ten minutes before close."

When she's not watching stocks, she'll spend an hour or two updating "Marina's Market Letter," which goes out to investors all over the country. Some days, she may attend an investment seminar or conduct one, check out a slide presentation on a new product or meet with a client to review his or her portfolio.

"Quite often, a male prospect--usually older--will walk into the office and say, 'Honey, get me a broker I can talk to.' When I reply that I'm a broker, he'll either look stunned and blush or say he'll come back later. A younger executive, on the other hand, is more likely to be relieved-- he feels I won't go for his throat. There are advantages and disadvantages. One other good thing is that when I attend out-of-town seminars, I'm guaranteed not to get double occupancy.

She can't easily imagine a woman's being able to do her job 20 years ago. "I don't think women wanted to be very involved in finance 20 or 30 years ago," she says. "They were more involved in raising families. This business is still a little stodgy, but Wall Street is finally becoming more accommodating to women. In order to succeed in business, you have to be ambitious, intelligent and energetic, and you have to exude self-confidence. Those traits are more important than gender. I believe that women should worry less about being women and more about achieving what they want."

The call turned into this pictorial, after almost a year's preparation--and indecision. The money game is, after all, a little hidebound and a lot regulated--unused to having members of its circle spotlighted outside their business suits.

"The exchange wants to put across the proper image, and I can see that," she says, leaning back. "But this is my spare time. Next year, I'm going to be 30, and Playboy probably won't be coming around after me five or ten years from now. I decided to go ahead and do something that's national, something that's different. Now Natasha says she can't wait till she's as pretty as I am so that she can be in Playboy, too."

Russian was the first language of Marina's childhood. She speaks it fluently enough to have been mistaken for a native during a recent tour of Moscow and the Crimea. While she's been assimilated into our free-enterprise system about as well as a woman can be, the old country did offer something she'll never achieve here--a title. Some of us drink White Russians; Marina's father was one in the last days of the czars--a bona fide prince under Nicholas and Alexandra, though no relation. You could look it up. Had history been different, we might be calling her Princess.

She doesn't miss the perks and responsibilities of royalty, though. Marina cares more about investments and keeping her options open. When ten- and 12-hour workdays threaten to turn her into little more than a figurehead, she travels or simply tries to put all the numbers out of her head.

"The mind needs a break," says our heartbreaking stockbroker. "Saturday and Sunday, the market's closed, so I really try to turn off. Maybe we'll go to a movie or to a friend's house--never clients, just friends--to relax and have a little wine. Because Monday morning, I want to be fresh. Monday morning, I want to think about it all over again."

Still, whenever opportunities knock, she's sure to be listening:

"If a more challenging or stimulating opportunity came along, I'd consider it seriously. Maybe I could work it around what I'm doing now. I'm not one to let the door go unanswered."

"This business is still a little stodgy, but Wall Street is finally becoming more accommodating to women."