CNBC Contributor Stephanie Link’s Wall Street Career Got Off to a ‘Running’ Start
Stephanie Link has been helping CNBC viewers build their net worth for years now, and now she has a big new job with Hightower Advisors.
Aug. 19 2021, Published 6:12 a.m. ET
Although Stephanie Link's net worth isn’t a matter of public record, you can be sure she’s been helping others increase their fortunes through her work as a CNBC contributor, a portfolio manager, and—as of a recent hiring—chief investment strategist at Hightower Advisors.
Link joined Hightower last year, after working as senior managing director and head of global equities research at Nuveen. During her time at Nuveen, Link co-managed the CREF Stock Variable Annuity Portfolio with $170 billion in assets, managed a U.S. Core portfolio with $3.7 billion in assets, and oversaw 33 investment professionals who collectively managed $40 billion, according to a Hightower press release.
Link got her first Wall Street job after a 30-minute conversation about running.
According to her CNBC bio, Link got a B.S. in finance from Boston College, then started her career in institutional sales at Dean Witter Reynolds before moving on to become managing director of institutional sales and director of research at Prudential Equity Group.
In a CNBC op-ed posted in March 2021, Link shared the story of how she broke into Wall Street, saying she and the Dean Witter Reynolds manager who interviewed her talked for 30 minutes about her running habit and what motivated her to work out every day. “I left the interview thinking I never got the job. He didn’t even ask me about a stock pick!” she wrote. “What I realize now and not then, is he was trying to figure out what drove me. I told him I wanted to be successful without saying it outright.”
Link joined Hightower after noticing its “significant growth trajectory”
Following her Prudential job, Link worked alongside fellow CNBC personality Jim Cramer as chief investment officer at TheStreet and co-portfolio manager of Cramer’s charitable trust. She spent seven years at TheStreet before moving on to Nuveen.
In June 2020, Hightower announced that it was linking up with Link, so to speak. “I have been watching the independent advisory space in the last 10 years, reviewing their offerings, strategies and competitive dynamic,” she said in a statement at the time. “Hightower stood out among the rest as an entrepreneurial and forward-thinking firm with a significant growth trajectory.”
Her stock picks include long positions on Apple, Boeing, and Cisco
Link’s CNBC bio also reveals her long positions as of Aug. 17. She’s long on Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL), Amazon (Nasdaq: AMZN), Air Products and Chemicals (Nasdaq: APD), Broadcom (Nasdaq: AVGO), American Express (NYSE: AXP), The Boeing Company (NYSE: BA), Bank of America (NYSE: BAC), Best Buy (NYSE: BBY), Caterpillar (NYSE: CAT), Cisco (Nasdaq: CSCO), Corteva (NYSE: CTVA), Chevron (NYSE: CVX), Dow Inc. (NYSE: DOW), The Estée Lauder Companies (NYSE: EL), and Emerson Electric (NYSE: EMR).
The long list of List’s long positions also includes Expedia (Nasdaq: EXPE), Diamondback Energy (Nasdaq: FANG), Fortinet (Nasdaq: FTNT), General Electric (NYSE: GE), Alphabet (Nasdaq: GOOG), IBM (NYSE: IBM), Johnson & Johnson (NYSE: JNJ), Coca-Cola (NYSE: KO), Lam Research Corporation (Nasdaq: LRCX), McDonald’s (NYSE: MCD), and Morgan Stanley (NYSE: MS).