Editorial
Street vandalism is condemnable
Address the chaos in capital market
Relentless fall of stock prices in the share market for the second week in a row has driven the investors so panicky that they have been resorting to violence and rowdy behaviour on the street. The automatic circuit-breaker introduced by the regulatory body, Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), to put a lid on the volatile stock market, too, could not pacify the angry investors. While on Wednesday the street violence was concentrated in the Motijheel area, on Thursday it spread to Dhanmodi and Mirpur s in the city as well as in Chittagong and Rajshahi engaging the police in a pitched battle with the investors as they started to ransack roadside shops, break vehicles, set fire to stacks of paper and block the main highway for hours.
Why the unsuspecting pedestrian, commuter, or vehicle operators on the road have to pay dearly for the share market speculators' failure to make a judicious judgment before making their investment decision in a volatile share market? The way they have been engaged in vandalism on the street cannot be condoned, even if we are sympathetic to their woes caused by lost investments. At the same time, the law and order forces, too, need to be more on the alert seeing that the kerb market is situated in the hub of a business district of the capital.
On any count, it is a sad commentary on our kerb market entrepreneurs that they are yet to understand the very basics of the market, which is a speculative one that they have chosen to put their money in. The fact of the matter is that being basically a speculative market, the investors will have to go by its own rules of the game. And what the government, the regulatory agencies and others concerned can do best is to provide necessary information and develop required level of awareness among the fresh entrepreneurs so that they are able to make an informed choice before investing in the stock market.
Regrettably, there are operators who can manipulate the market disproportionately and thereby drive the share prices up or below far beyond the actual worth of the market. Looking at the trend of uncontrollable market slump in 201l following a persistent rise in the market index in 2010, there is reason to believe that some string-pulling is being done by a handful of unscrupulous operators from behind the scene. So, as the finance minister has instructed the SEC, those culprits should be identified and brought to justice without delay.
Having said that, we would like to stress further that the short-term measures like the ones already taken by the regulatory authorities are not going to solve the recurring crisis in the stock market. The necessity now is to think of long-term policies to bring stability in the stock market if they are to restore the investors' trust and continue to encourage fresh entrepreneurs in the country's fledgling capital market.
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