(News Bulletin 247) – Present on the Wall Street “floor” since 1985, this expressive broker is very often photographed to illustrate articles related to the news of the American markets. His popularity and his easy contact have led him to rub shoulders with real stars and perhaps even to become one.

You may not know who Peter Tuchman is. But if you’re even remotely interested in the markets, you’ve probably seen his face. A fixture on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange since 1985, the sixty-year-old broker has been a darling of photographers for several years, becoming a sort of Wall Street mascot. So much so that Buzzfeed introduced him in 2014 as “Wall Street’s most photographed trader,” an unofficial title that has stuck ever since.

Not stingy with photogenic facial expressions, to the great delight of photographers aware that photos with him will have a better chance of being published, Peter Tuchman takes the pseudonym of “Einstein of Wall Street” on social networks. His face can, in fact, recall the famous physicist, even if the resemblance was more striking a few years ago.

Quite famous, Peter Tuchman has been able to appear alongside stars (the stars regularly parade on the “floor” which is also a very media and networking place). Our colleagues at AFP, for example, took a photo of him with the Australian singer Iggy Azalea, last June. The NBA giant, Shaquille O’Neal, even kissed his skull during a visit to Wall Street in 2015. “Peter is smart. So when I’m at home and I’m wearing my suit, I want to feel like Peter when I handle my penny stocks (shares worth less than $1 each, Editor’s note)”, the basketball player had declared at the time, according to CNBC.

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Early studies in agriculture

Funny and entertaining, the New Yorker has a career that sounds a bit like a little American dream. The market specialist detailed it in an interview

to the “Humbled Trader” channel on Youtube in 2023. “My life has been unusual, made of successes and failures,” he sums up.

Her parents, Marcel and Shoshana, survived the Holocaust and internment at Auschwitz. They lost a large part of their family because of the Shoah. Marcel and Shoshana met in a transit camp for displaced persons after the liberation by the Russians and English, and fell in love very quickly. They then studied medicine for a few years in Germany before emigrating to the United States in 1949. Her father became a fairly successful doctor while her mother focused on the family. According to Peter Tuchman, her parents spoke eleven languages ​​in total.

Peter Tuchman was born and raised in New York, in a background that he describes as quite privileged but not necessarily wealthy. “Family was important and education was important,” he explains. So much so that Peter Tuchman attended a private school. During his studies, he began to develop an entrepreneurial spirit, for example by selling t-shirts at rock n’ roll concerts in the 70s. At the end of high school, he became interested in agriculture without really knowing why (“we had a house in the country, a garden”). After spending a year on a kibbutz in Israel, he studied agriculture at the University of Massachusetts.

But after a while, his adopted older brother (he had been taken in by his parents at the age of eight during the war) who had become a businessman encouraged him to come and work with him. Peter Tuchman returned to university to study finance and began to invest a little in agricultural commodities, such as orange juice, while continuing his studies in New York to obtain a master’s degree.

A rapid rise

Peter Tuchman then worked in Benin for a Norwegian oil company. Then in 1985, he returned to New York and through his father’s patients, the young man landed on the “floor” on Wall Street, obtaining a summer job as a teletype operator at Cowen & Co. “The minute I arrived on the floor I loved it and I knew that I wanted to do (the broker’s job, Editor’s note) forever,” he assures.

But as the market expert explains, there are several steps and less glorious functions to go through than being a broker (a financial intermediary who takes orders from clients on the market and executes them) before you can practice this precise profession. Peter Tuchman tells “Humbled Trader” that going from teletype operator to broker could take “twelve to fifteen years.” But it would only take him two and a half years to go through all these steps, both because he was good at what he did and because he was, according to him, “lucky.” He thus became a broker in April 1988.

His career would evolve a bit. Peter Tuchman would specialize in convertible stocks, securities that can be converted into shares with more rights but fewer dividends. He would work for several brokerage firms and set up his own business for a while (according to CNBC). However, he would settle down in 2011 at Quattro Securities, after having experienced lean years in the meantime following the financial crisis. “I had lost a lot of clients, accounts, but it was a job that I loved (…) I continued to believe in it and hope that I could rebuild my empire,” he explains.

It was during the rather difficult period of the 2007-2008 crisis that he became the figure of the “floor”. A New York media outlet took his portrait in April 2007 for a notable cover, where Peter Tuchman raised his arm in the air while looking at the lens. Then the New York Post devoted an article to find out who this trader in the photo was and interviewed him.

“It launched my (media, editor’s note) career; I started covering media around the world,” he explains.

His nickname “Einstein of Wall Street” is more recent. A journalist from CNBC, an American media outlet specializing in financial markets, nicknamed him “Einstein”, because of his physique. Then a person he hired to develop his image on social networks suggested that he build a character around this nickname and present himself as “the Einstein of Wall Street”.

Feminizing finance and spending time with family

Peter Tuchman will gradually be interviewed by the media to dissect the news on Wall Street. Which will surprise him a little at first because he didn’t think he had much to say. Peter Tuchman will notably appear on a German show called “Inside Wirtschaft” where he will speak English while feigning a German accent, a language he does not speak.

The broker believes that his growing popularity has been “a wonderful gift”, especially because he loves interacting with all kinds of people. And he has been able to develop his character, become, in his own words, “an influencer” on social networks, set up a trading academy, hold conferences around the world, or even be paid for his image to be used by brokerage companies in Europe in their advertisements. “I was able to launch another career”, he sums up.

Peter Tuchman is still active on Wall Street, although his eldest son, who is his partner, has taken over his businesses while his father develops his other sources of income. The financial broker also says he wants to help “break the glass ceiling for women in finance,” sitting on the boards of women-led companies, such as the trading app Alinea.

On the personal side, Peter Tuchman enjoys gardening, tennis, the mountains, skiing, traveling and jazz (he played the saxophone). He claims to be especially focused on his family. In addition to his son Benny, thirty, a broker who works with him, Peter Tuchman has a daughter, 27, Lucy, who studied social administration. “She is very interested in politics, let’s say she has a degree to save the world,” he sums up.

The broker lost his wife of 33 years to cancer last year. “She was my best friend,” he says. Peter Tushman, who describes himself as a hard worker, also gives a piece of advice in the form of regret to “Humbled Trader”: “I didn’t spend enough time with her, I would love to spend a Friday or a Monday with her now. Don’t take work too seriously, don’t waste these opportunities to have time with those you love because you don’t know what the future will hold.”