Why wild capital?
Raison d'être: at the intersection of investing, business, music and sports and Romania's stock market in particular.
This is wild capital, a newsletter about views on life, investing, business, music and sports with a focus on USA, European and Romanian market - the wild east of finance. Tangentially we or I will draw upon insights from history, tech, psychology, philosophy, sociological theory - investing is a game where each comes into play.
To note: We are not a financial analyst company and these do not constitute investment recommendations. Do your own research - you know the drill. All opinions are our own. Not financial advice. All material presented in this newsletter is not to be regarded as investment advice, but for general informational purposes only.
I’m actually the farthest away from what one could classify as a sophisticated investor. I have a background in economics though my attention in class was cursory at best. I run a web development firm and my interests sit at a intersection of business, life, spirituality, music and wrestling. I do read quarterly reports for fun though, even though I can’t really read between the lines, I enjoy making educated guesses.
I’m invested in Romania’s stock market for 10 years already, having first started with a broad market index fund (our local BET index), moving most of my $ in crypto sometime when BTC was 10k, watched BTC climb up to 20k and down to 3k and up again to 60k, built a position in ETFs, moved most of it again to chase TSLA on a hunch mostly driven by Cathy Wood’s TSLA analysis - I figured it has so many words and pretty graphs that basically said “to the moon!” there will be lots of interest in this, at around $900 pre-pre-split, saw it drop to 300$, sold close to the top at around $1000 after it’s first split, and now out of TSLA as I feel it’s valuation is mental, and now patiently building a position in PLTR as one of my main holdings on the USA stock market and slowly concentrating everything else on the Romanian stock market.
I’m pretty convinced now that Romania’s figuring out the whole capitalism thing, most young Romanians are turning their attention towards the stock market. As I feel there’s less money to be made on already high-valuation companies like Apple or Google (sure, they’re safe - to each their own), I think lots of us will look to seize up opportunities locally.
Currently there are somewhere less than 100k investors on BVB, Romania’s stock market according to analysts. That’s to a population of 18 million.
Sure, there may be liquidity issues - when there are so few of us, I’ve personally saw some of my trades spike up the order book for the day. And I’m playing with peanuts.
I’m thinking there are a few trends happening at the same time that will prove my idea of investing locally.
De-globalization is starting to look as a more immediate trend than expected.
Everyone has iPhones and what not and access to information, everyone knows about NASDAQ. That said, in our culture we’ve all heard “joacă la bursă” - “gambling on the stock market”. I feel as people start to figure out that the stock market may be a wealth builder for the long-game, we’re in for a wave of investors looking outside the usual buy and hold VTI.
Lots of stable companies are insanely cheap. Though this comes with the liquidity risk I mentioned, I’m guessing this will change over the next 10 years.
Some rich dude can just outright buy on the open market an airplane factory for less than 50 mil euros (and I didn’t make that up), which is peanuts on a global scale. Similar to what Ryan Cohen did with $GME.
While the RON has under performed historically I feel that may not be the case growing forward seeing as how Romania’s standard of life evolves
I’m aiming for a couple of things through my writing here:
attract expats currently living in Romania and young local investors towards our stock market
if the above mentioned Mr. Moneybags does indeed get involved in our ecosystem and purchases a company to further develop that’d be golden - I imagine lots of current opportunities might make sense for international investors looking to diversify or expand upon an existing business. That’d create an awesome flywheel of effects - better economy, more jobs, more people invested in the market, more money flowing around, more liquidity and stability, more jobs. Hopefully more of us plebs would be in the game before the capitalists buy in.
demystifying the stock market - if someone makes his way onto the stock market and helps set himself up and/or his family for the future that’d be a win in my book
develop clarity in my own thinking and investment thesis.