Marisa Rothstein

In 1976, a man who had recently been fired ran a financial experiment that Wall Street called “Bogle’s Folly.” John Bogle had just founded Vanguard and launched the first index mutual fund available to ordinary investors — a fund designed not to beat the S&P 500, but simply to match it. The premise was almost insultingly simple: stop paying managers to guess, buy everything in the index proportionally, and let the market do its work. Lower costs, less trading, performance that mirrored the...

I walked into a Manhattan hospital Monday morning to visit one of my dearest clients, more like an aunt to me after our many years together. She is a force, the kind of woman who packs a dinner party to the rafters, feeds people until they beg for mercy, and pulls anyone within arm’s reach to an art exhibit or fundraising gala. I had naively assumed she had at least another ten vivid years ahead of her. Heartbreakingly, the validity of that assumption is now being seriously tested. Continue...

The data tells a story that many women already know, though now it comes with precision eye-tracking studies to prove it. When financial advisors meet with heterosexual couples, they spend approximately 60% of their time physically focused on the male partner—a phenomenon one might call "gender myopia." This isn't merely about eye contact; it represents a measurable manifestation of deeply rooted gender bias in financial services. Indeed, according to a 2020 New York Life study, 40% of women...