In 1967, who became the first woman to own a seat on the New York Stock Exchange?

In 1967, Muriel Siebert became the first woman to own a seat on the New York Stock Exchange.

Siebert, often called “Mickie,” had built a career as a securities analyst and founded Muriel Siebert & Co. in 1967. Buying an NYSE seat allowed her firm to trade directly on the Exchange floor, then a central institution in American finance.

Her purchase faced significant resistance. She approached nine men before finding a sponsor, and the NYSE required her to arrange financing in a way it had not required of other applicants. The seat cost $445,000—more than $4 million in modern-dollar terms according to historical estimates.

Siebert remained the only woman among the NYSE’s 1,366 members for roughly a decade. The achievement is sometimes confused with being the first woman to work on Wall Street or the first woman to lead the NYSE; those milestones belong to different people and dates.