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At age 11 Cassandra Toroian '94 started picking stocks, helping set her mother up with some good investments. At age 12, she bought her own shares, in First Pennsylvania Bank.
“I liked the risk and the luck involved,” says Toroian, a government and law and Spanish graduate. “You could invest in something, and if it goes up, you make money. It was an interesting concept. I never thought about being on the losing end.”
Today, Toroian, of Wynnewood, Pa., is picking stocks as a partner in Cohen Bros. & Co., Philadelphia, a “boutique” investment bank where she launched a hedge fund in July. The fund buys and sells stocks for qualified buyers with a high net worth. “It's got better returns than bonds, but it's less risky than stocks and has gained 8.5 percent since July,” she says.
Last year The Wall Street Journal Best on the Street Analysts Survey named her one of the nation's top five bank analysts for stock picking based on 1999 returns. Her stock picks had a 55.2 percent return for the year, compared with a median of minus 17.2 percent for the 98 analysts included in the survey.
Urges women to invest
Toroian urges women to take the risks and reap the rewards of investing. “If you don't invest, you're bound by the limits of your paycheck,” she says. “Women have different issues from men. They live longer. So women have to be more aggressive in picking, not just putting money in the bank and in CDs. They need to spread it into opportunities with more risk, but more upside.”
Not yet 30, Toroian has thrived in the male-dominated Wall Street world for several years. A woman who wants to be an analyst or investment banker has to have a thick skin, she says, adding that hers is thick enough.”Many things don't bother me,” she says. “At this point, people aren't looking at me as a woman, but as a brain. I've been very fortunate to have strong women as an example as an analyst and an entrepreneur. That's a big key to success.”
But Toroian hasn't heard stories of young women, as of young men, being handed $50 million by venture capitalists to start their own companies. When seeking investors for a web site called Financialmuse.com she found it disturbing to have to convince a table full of men that women needed to learn about the stock market. “There's a really long way to go,” says Toroian. “For many women entrepreneurs, the only way to succeed is to do something on their own. It's the only way to become a CEO.”
Financialmuse.com was launched in February 2000 as the first live financial services web site devoted to women that would let them transact business without leaving the site.
Toroian had planned for Financialmuse to make money as a brokerage, instead of through advertising. But by the time regulators got through evaluating it, the stock market had declined, and customers were no longer buying online, she says.
“We were frugal with our cash, but we could see that it wouldn't last forever, so we decided to put Financialmuse on the back burner and make it an offline seminar company to educate women about money,” Toroian says.
Toroian created Cohen Bros. with two partners, targeting public companies in the financial services sector. She's the firm's director of research. “So far it's going very well,” she says. “I've been at it since early spring. I love what I'm doing. I'm an analyst and a fairly successful one. So far, I've short-circuited the usual long, drawn-out way of rising through the ranks.”
Finding her niche
Toroian has found her career niche, but it wasn't always that way. “During my first semester, I would come home and watch CNBC every day. In 1994, I was just fascinated by the stock market,” she says. “I liked what I was learning in law school, but I didn't feel I was getting real-world skills.” Instead of finishing law school, she got an M.B.A. in finance at University of Miami and then a job with Merrill Lynch, using her Spanish while doing private banking, lending money to wealthy South Americans.
Toroian later moved back to the Philadelphia area to work for Ryan, Beck & Co., where she earned kudos from The Wall Street Journal. It was her acquaintance with former Jefferson Bank chief executive Betsy Z. Cohen that led to Financialmuse and Cohen Bros.
Toroian foresees continuing to manage money and educate women about investing, resuming Financialmuse when the time is right. For now, she often shares her knowledge with investment clubs, where she advises listeners to pay attention to the products a company makes as well as its earnings.
“You can pick the best stocks in the world and then something like Sept. 11 occurs. You never know what tomorrow will bring,” she says. “But homework and diligence mitigates that. There's some luck involved and also some skill, although anyone can do it if they set their mind to it.”
A partner in Cohen Bros. & Co. of Philadelphia, Toroian '94 launched a hedge fund in July.