Advertising; A small request for decency

Tom Paine

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I've been amazed at the idiocy of much of the advertising aimed at traders. They sound as if they were written by Donald Trump's ad team.

One in particular that struck me as over the top was running on Bloomberg TV; I couldn't identify the advertiser, which is an important measure of an ad's effectiveness. I'll try to ID it later.

The ad starts with a woman saying to a male companion: "Did you hear about the huge earthquake in Asia"? Rather than following that remark with a discussion of how many were affected, or how they might make a donation or do something else that might be helpful, the woman goes on to say something like: "This creates some tremendous opportunities. [My broker's] system is up when all the others are down. I've got some hedge fund trades to make."

No doubt people do trade on natural disasters. And though this behavior may appear at times selfish from a micro point of view, it serves a useful economic purpose from a macro point of view. But the nature of the ad is so crass so to make it a complete turnoff.

UPDATE 12/4: Ad is by Interactive Brokers, Inc. Still looking for exact copy on Youtube.

Update 12/7: This is the exact same ad as the earthquake ad, except the opening pretext changed. Now its "Did you hear? Russia shot down a NATO plane"?