KILOMETER ZERO OF INVESTMENTS The BSE has organized its vanity fair

Once a focal point of protests against dictatorship, the University Square was rented yesterday for the apotheosis of Lucian Anghel at the feet of Mihai Viteazu astride and the ascension of Ludwik Sobolewski sitting on his chair in the desert, raised there fir the "first financial exhibition organized by the Bucharest Stock Exchange", as written on the covers of the promotional materials, which, being just covers, do not have the memory of other fairs organized by the BSE back when Sobolewski was defending his Bachelor's thesis in law in Krakow and had not yet heard about the stock market, which he only became familiar with in 2006.

Seen from the plane, the Square had received six things that looked like breasts, which Spiru Haret and Gheorghe Lazăr were sternly looking down upon, and once you went down to the sidewalk, you would see that they were six circular tents, similar in shape to Ceauşescu's butcher's shops.

"Banii Tăi Expo" ("Your money" Expo) was promoted by the BSE as an event dedicated to the level of financial education in Romania, but the interest of potential clients was extremely low, in contrast with the all-out deployment of the organizers.

According to the photographs taken on location, the number of organizers present has surpassed that of the participants, most of the time during the event.

Because of the low turnover, many of the scheduled seminars were not held, and some of the "classes" were only held in the presence of five people.

Some people were expecting a higher number of young people to participate in the exhibition, but it was the older people who received vouchers in the Mass Privatization Program who lined up at the booth of the Central Depository, because that institution provided free account statements during the event.

Other than that, it was all depressing.

For instance, the booth of one of the companies present, only received three visitors over the course of an hour, during the afternoon.

Many of the visitors were attracted by the free "goodies" which are usually offered at such events: t-shirts, coffees.

At the opening of the event, Ludwik Sobolewski, the CEO of the BSE, said that he expects two kinds of visitors, some that come in because they know about the event and others who are just passing by, and the latter he hopes to captivate and make them take a few minutes to ask for information on how they can invest on the stock market.

"It is an event that will last two days. I think that we have the chance of getting about 3-5,000 visitors that would interact with us during these two days", said Ludwik Sobolewski, quoted by Agerpres.

At an average of four people an hour, per booth, on the six tents in the University Square, a simple calculation shows that on the first day, the exhibition must have been visited by approximately 200 people on the first day. Even including the visits to the Booth of the Central Depository, Sobolewski's target seems like a blatant exaggeration.

In his speech, Sobolewski said that approximately 20,000 individual investors are active on the Bucharest Stock Exchange, at least five times less than the potential of the market, according to the quoted press agency.

There is no doubt that the initiative of the BSE is praiseworthy and has been requested by the market. The stock market must come down among the people. But not literally, among the people who are waiting at the bus stop. The institution must conduct studies, to see where the people who have money are, what the structure of wealth is how it can be tapped. I have asked Ludwik Sobolewski to do that in the first meeting, after he took over his job as CEO of the BSE.

Two years have passed and all he did was the "Eight barriers" project and he has rebranded the ATS, without any results, and then he crossed his arms and blamed the government.

And he didn't just say it in private, he said it in the US. He took the liberty of mocking us and he is not even a Romanian citizen.

A Romanian like Lucian Boia, who says that Romanians are stupid, is awful, but he is Romanian and he is credible.

A Pole incapable of doing a good job on the stock market and who says that Romanians are stupid is actually describing himself.