Verbal-and sometimes physical-abuse was hurled at us.” But there was big money to be made, and Fabré admits to wanting “the cars, the houses in the Hamptons, the Gucci and the Versace.” At the age of 20, “without knowing a single thing about investing,” she became a broker. “All callers were made to feel inferior,” writes the author, “had it hammered into them that they were lowly dialers, good for punching numbers into a phone and uttering words from a script, nothing more.

“Whenever I set out to do something,” she asserts, with no false modesty, “I was confident it would work out for me.” VTR certainly tested her conviction: Like all the Black and Latine cold callers, she was brutally belittled by the White brokers.

Fabré had no doubt that she would excel, get sponsored, and pass the challenging test. After three months as a cold caller, she learned, your firm could sponsor you for a test to earn a broker’s license. Although she would be working as a cold caller for a low salary, she saw the job as an investment in her future. In her zesty debut memoir, the author recounts her surprising journey from roach-filled public housing to becoming one of the “youngest Black female stockbrokers.” At the age of 19, she was an ace salesperson for an optical shop when she met a recruiter for VTR Capital, an offshoot of the notorious investment firm portrayed in Wolf of Wall Street. The daughter of Haitian immigrants lands on Wall Street.īorn in the South Bronx and raised in Queens, Fabré styled herself as a brash, street-smart hustler, traits that served her well when she found herself working on Wall Street.

Wolf Hustle by Cin Fabré