The Blind Broker

Being young and a woman are disadvantages enough on Wall Street, but Laura Sloate has a third handicap: she has been blind since she was six years old. Even so, after a mere five years in the securities business, she grossed more than $100,000 in 1973 as a research analyst with Drexel Burnham, a major securities house. Last week she opened her own securities firm with two associates and a seat on the New York Stock Exchange.

Encouraged by her mother, who, she says, never let her be treated as a blind person, Sloate originally set out to be a lawyer. After graduating from Barnard College in 1966 with a major in medieval history, she enrolled in Columbia University Law School but dropped out because she concluded that prospects for a blind woman lawyer were almost impossible. She got into the securities business by answering an ad from a go-go mutual fund that wanted analyst trainees without experience. As a girl, she had played basketball by positioning her feet on a crack in the court and shooting from memory. Now, she still operates from memory. Four hours each day and nine hours on Saturday she listens to readers recite the volumes of technical detail about companies and the economy that she must evaluate to make recommendations for clients.

Some colleagues say that Sloate sometimes uses her blindness to win sympathy and describe her as a highly aggressive person. She concedes: "I've been known to annoy people." But she has demonstrated an ability to help her clients make money, and in the stock market that talent will overcome any handicap.

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