Small investors have established themselves as the main investors in the capital market over the past four decades, but most of them have no knowledge of it — yet they believe they understand the share market, said Masud Khan, chairman of the Bangladesh Securities and Exchange Commission (BSEC), the capital-market regulator. He said such investors invest on hearsay, chasing “gamblers,” and all buy the same share, so they are repeatedly deceived by market manipulators. He made the remarks at a mock parliament titled “What to do to resolve the crisis of confidence in the capital market,” organised by Debate for Democracy at the Bangladesh Film Development Corporation (FDC) on Saturday, chaired by Debate for Democracy chairman Hasan Ahmed Chowdhury.
The BSEC chairman said the country’s investors want to get rich quickly, so instead of good shares they invest in weak ones. “Our investors have no knowledge of the share market. What has to be done here? There must be people to guide investors, and for that the importance of mutual funds must be increased,” he said. He said the steps being taken would surely turn the market around, and that oversight of brokerage houses would be greatly increased in future, with the signature process taken out of brokerage houses’ hands and digitalised so that the process-related corruption by brokerage houses would no longer be possible.
The regulator’s chief said both the regulator and the market had to be watched, not just one, and that last year’s margin rules had greatly disheartened investors, so the commission had taken steps to reform them again. At the mock parliament, debaters from Prime University won by defeating debaters from Sonargaon University. The judges were Professor Abu Muhammad Rais and journalists Mainul Alam, Faruk Mehedi, Iqbal Ahsan and Hossain Shahadat.
বাংলায় মূল প্রতিবেদন পড়ুন · Read the original Bengali report