'The Einstein of Wall Street': How I Became the Face of the Wall Street Trader — Journal Report

By Peter Tuchman

I wasn't always the "Einstein of Wall Street."

Now, however, most people know me by that moniker from my turn as the most photographed trader on the New York Stock Exchange. I'm the guy with the expressive reactions and horseshoe of white hair (resembling Albert Einstein) who often illustrates news coverage about daily market moves — particularly on volatile days when stocks plummet or surge and investors want insights into what happened.

Indeed, a sharply down day for markets in late-February 2007 — the earliest rumblings of the financial crisis — is when I first came into public view. More than halfway into my career, I was featured on the cover of the Daily News in New York with the headline "What Now Dow?" That cover is framed and hanging in my office.

It was the beginning of what have become the best years of my life. Since then, continuing to this day, I've been shown in thousands of different market photographs (no exaggeration), appeared on hundreds of front pages and made countless television appearances all around the world to discuss stock action. Even to this day I'm featured in mainstream media daily from the floor of the stock exchange covering market movements and volatility. Eventually I started to get noticed and recognized on the street (small "s") — a source of pride for my late wife, Lise, and children, Benjamin and Lucy.

Clearly my expressive face and lively demeanor are what caught people's eyes, which to this day seems a bit surreal, but I've been honored and humbled to be the face of Wall Street and the New York Stock Exchange.

The American dream

Yet the story of my journey goes beyond my two decades as a photogenic icon. Growing up in New York, my world was shaped by the experiences of my parents, both Holocaust survivors who met in a displaced-persons camp after the war. My father was among a group of 30 survivors who were the first Jewish students admitted to medical school in postwar Germany, where he stayed until 1949 to finish his degree before moving to the U.S. to begin his career as a physician.

My parents gave me every opportunity and encouraged exploration. And after college, where I studied agriculture and international finance, I seized as many of those opportunities as I could. I worked as a doorman at the famed Studio 54 nightclub, I opened a record store on Bleecker Street in Greenwich Village, and I traded commodities all while studying for a master's in business in the evenings. After this time in New York, I found my way to West Africa where I worked as an accountant for a Norwegian oil company before my parents suggested I come home and settle down.

Each chapter was unique, but none could have prepared me for the day I first set foot on the NYSE floor. Through a patient of my father's who was a partner at Cowen & Co., I landed a summer job in 1985 as a teletypist at the Big Board — basically a data-entry clerk. From that moment, I knew that I never wanted to be anywhere else. The adrenaline, the chaos and the excitement are what grabbed my attention, making me feel that I had finally arrived. I gradually moved up the ranks — working as an options clerk, retail clerk and institutional clerk. Within 3 1/2 years, I earned my seat on the exchange and became a broker on April 17, 1988 — joined nearly 30 years later by my son.

What I've seen

The Dow Jones Industrial Average was around 1265 on my first day, March 28, 1985; trades were made through an open-outcry system and auction market, taking seven days to be cleared, and the market was mainly the domain of institutional traders. Today the Dow sits around 44000, trades for the most part are completed electronically and nearly instantaneously, and millions of new retail investors have gotten into the action thanks to free trading apps and the democratization of markets through platforms like Robinhood and Webull.

Four decades after my start on Wall Street, I can honestly say that I'm living the dream in the most advanced capital market in human history — the last bastion of capitalism. I've had the privilege of witnessing firsthand some of the most significant moments in market history — the crash of 1987, the dot-com bubble of 2000, the financial crisis of 2008, and even the challenges of Covid.

And my 15 minutes of fame as the Einstein of Wall Street clearly aren't over — even though there are some new faces vying for my position as the most photographed trader. I'm still photographed nearly every day, and this familiarity with the public helped me launch Wall Street Global Trading Academy, which is an online day trader-education platform created with former NYSE market maker David Green to teach strategies using technical analysis and risk management, among other ventures.

While technology has transformed the Big Board and drastically reduced the number of floor traders, I am convinced humans will always be relevant and necessary. What I hope will be my ultimate legacy is that I used my platform and profile to train the new generation of investors and motivated others to find the same excitement in markets that I do every day.

Peter Tuchman is senior floor trader at TradeMas and co-founder of Wall Street Global Trading Academy. He can be reached at reports@wsj.com.