For three years running, Bloomberg Tradebook has hosted an annual Charity Day. The event brings together people from all walks of celebrity life to, under the tutelage of Bloomberg employees, learn to trade, with any net earnings (after trading expenses and settlement fees) going to charity. This year’s edition — which took place late last month in New York, London and Hong Kong — provided a Halloween-themed media relations bonanza for the financial news and data behemoth. Not only does the firm raise money for nonprofits — nearly $3 million over three years — it lures in business journalists from other news outlets with the prospects of meeting sports stars, television personalities and supermodels with Bloomberg hoping for a few event-hashtagged tweets and lighthearted blog posts in exchange.
At last year’s event in New York, among those taking up the trading terminal was actor Chris Noth, best known as Sex and the City’s Mr. Big. Keeping to formula, this year’s Bloomberg Tradebook Charity Day roster included model and actress Bridget Moynahan (whose Sex and the City character coincidentally was briefly married to Mr. Big), former New York Yankees pitcher Mariano Rivera, Top Chef host Padma Lakshmi and supermodel Petra Nemcova. (By the look of Nemcova’s name badge, her people submitted a photo to Bloomberg security in advance of the event rather than getting the requisite ultra-flattering Bloomberg front-desk camera snap.) Originally my Institutional Investor colleague Georgie Hurst and I were marked down by Bloomberg’s media relations team to interview the supermodel and super chef.
But as is the case with many of these daylong, media-focused events, schedules can get a little backed up. Lakshmi arrived some 30 minutes after Georgie and I got there and Nemcova hadn’t arrived yet. When I was getting ready that morning, I was anxious that my hair was too frizzy, my heels not high enough and my manicure too chipped to pass the muster of interviewing the model set. As it turns out, the anxieties on which our eventual interview subject is an expert would be of a variety more Kinsey Institute than Costume Institute. We wound up chatting with Dr. Ruth Westheimer, among the best-known U.S. sex therapists.
Heels could come off. Hooray.
The voice of the 4-foot-7-inch psychologist, now 86, instantly conjured flashbacks to the mid-1980s, when as a preschooler I would see her frequent appearances on daytime television and pick up vocabulary that would later leave my mother hemming and hawing. Now, it was my turn to get the octogenarian psychologist musing on how to have the happiest returns.
Dr. Ruth has a likely market advantage on some of her fellow celeb traders, having traded at Cantor Fitzgerald for years on behalf of nonprofits benefiting families of 9/11 victims and the Museum of Jewish Heritage. And if her trading stint last year is any indication, Dr. Ruth is a tenacious financier.
She points at my note pad. “I have a funny story for you and your magazine! Write this down,” she says in her signature German accent, putting the stress on every third word. “Last year, I broke my wrist and my arm talking and walking on the phone. I came to the fundraiser. I didn’t stay home. I came wearing a Hermès scarf in an old-fashioned sling. I told them, I’m not staying home and I broke my wrist.”
Charity Day was Dr. Ruth’s first time working the terminals at Bloomberg, raising money on behalf of the Child Mind Institute (CMI), an organization dedicated to promoting mental health care for children and teens. “The reason I’m doing this is that I believe in what they’re doing,” she continued. “They are helping young people, even if they can’t pay.” In Dr. Ruth’s view, much of the onus falls on the financial world to meet this funding gap.
“I think it’s an important message for investors to be able to say, ‘It’s wonderful that you all make money. It’s wonderful that you all employ so many people and let them bring a paycheck home,’” she opines. “I hope the message I am giving is that other institutions also should do that. Not just Cantor Fitzgerald, not just Bloomberg, but other institutions should take at least one day a year and do this. It’s not a big sacrifice.”
During our conversation, Dr. Ruth kept reminding me that she was not really an expert on finance itself. I then leaned in and asked for financial advice anyway — but in a manner that rings true with Dr. Ruth’s trademark area of expertise.
“What tips do you have for an enjoyable first-time trading experience? A virgin trade, that is?”
Dr. Ruth’s face lit up in the sort of way a young employee does the first time speaking at a staff meeting. “That is a great question,” she noted, keeping her same staccato prosody but in a happier lilt. “You have to choose your stocks carefully. All people have to be enthusiastic.”
But before she dispensed with her scintillating advice worthy of a new series on CNBC, the sexpert had corrected me: “Don’t use ‘virgin.’”
I was left as red as an autumn maple.
Follow Anne Szustek on Twitter at @the59thStBridge.
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