Our Portfolios, Ourselves (continued)

Striking a Chord
Ms. Felenstein hatched the idea for a woman's investment club last March, after reading about the Beardstown Ladies on her way home from a cosmetics convention. "The truth is I didn't even buy the book," she said. But when she reached New York she phoned her friends.

Drumming up interest turned out to be the easy part. "The minute I mentioned this, the answering machine was full of messages," Ms. Felenstein recalled. "It didn't matter whether we were single, widowed, married or divorced. We were all seeking knowledge." In fact, she had to turn people away, and to accommodate them she has since launched a second club and has plans for more.

"I see the need so desperately," she said.

The 008 Club itself ‚ named for the eights that appear in the date and address of one of the first meetings ‚ was born last April. Besides Ms. Levin and Ms. Weinbach, its 28 members, mostly in their mid-40's to mid-50's, include Kate Coburn, a vice president at Rockefeller Center Management; Carol Safir, a real estate agent whose husband is New York City's Fire Commissioner and a woman, married to a powerful takeover lawyer, who asked not to be identified and does not vote on stocks to avoid conflicts with her husband's business.

Ms. Felenstein also decided the club needed a guide through the tangled world of investing. The person she asked to join for that purpose was Paine Webber's Marilyn Hope Crockett, her new broker.

It was a logical choice, and not just because Ms. Crockett, with her navy suits, pearls and status in the Colonial Dames, is on a social par with the 008 women. For Ms. Crockett specializes in women's investment issues, a specialty that is seasoned for her by personal experience.

Almost seven years ago, at age 40, Ms. Crockett broke up with the man she had lived with for 19 years and suddenly realized that she had little financial security. Her job-related retirement money would have amounted to just $100 a month. Now a broker, she tries to steer other women from similar mistakes.

In the case of the club, she does this steering for free. While some 008 members are her clients and perhaps sources for more clients, Ms. Crockett says she see fielding phone calls, arranging speakers and gathering material for the club as good deeds. Nor does she serve as the group's broker someone else at Paine Webber does, and the club gets the firm's 40 percent employee discount on commissions. "For me, this is more of a mission," said Ms. Crockett.

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