Recent Trends in Capital Market of Bangladesh Critical Evaluation of Regulation Essay Example

down to the street. This is the small picture of stock market crashes in Bangladesh. In both cases regulators had failed to take proactive measures to not grow the bubble and caused losses for millions of investors when the bubbles burst. When analysts were anxious about the bubbles, regulators were ignoring them and even defended the bubbles. The recent volatility of the capital market of Bangladesh is an abnormal phenomenon and such volatility tends to economic instability. I believe it will be interested enough to look into the causes of the problem.

As such volatility affects mass people (many investors), it is essential to try to minimize such volatility by identifying the causes (esp. , Regulatory failure) and solving the problems. In my study, I will try to identify the reasons of this volatility and also to recommend some suggestions to minimize such volatility in future. 1. 2 ? Statement of the Problems As recent volatility raises many questions about the regulatory capability of the SEC, I would like to study whether regulator had any rule to worsen the problem or does it had anything to do at all?

In my study, I will try to identify the reasons of recent unexpected events of the capital market of Bangladesh and will also try so suggests some ways to avoid same incidences in the future. Another reason to choose this topic is my present job field. I work for the central Bank of Bangladesh that plays a vital rule for economic development as a regulator. So the learning from this study will help me to identify  future risks associated with both money and capital

market and also will make me able to make proactive decisions to prevent the economy from such disasters.

As no research is made in this important issue, I believe that my research will be very useful for users. I also believe that regulators (e. g. , SEC, DSE, CSE, Bangladesh Bank) might use my study to strengthen the financial system (esp. , capital market) of Bangladesh. It is unknown whether the recent stock market fluctuation is due to regulatory failure or due to irrational behaviors of investors. Irrational behavior of investors might be an important reason for recent stock market bubble. Patterns of investor’s behavior might be covered by the study.

In many cases, data availability might hinder to reach on my objectives. Data related to stock manipulations and insider trading are not available and that’s why I have to rely on secondary sources (if there is any) to conduct my study. Objectives of the Research Overall objective The study will try to identify the rule of regulators behind the recent capital market crash and focus on developing a road map for promoting Sustainable capital market regulatory framework in Bangladesh.

The specific objectives of the study will be:

• To analyze and identify the reasons (Esp. regulatory rules. ) for recent stock market crash in Bangladesh.
• To review the existing listing and trading rules in Stock indices in Bangladesh.
• To recommend some guidelines for better regulations to strengthen the capital market of Bangladesh.

This study is focused on the recent trend of the capital market of Bangladesh. The study will explain the regulatory aspects of capital

market of Bangladesh on the basis of disclosed regulations and will try to judge the quality of the regulations in terms of its achievement of the goals. This study is basically descriptive in nature.

Data is collected from both Primary (Stock Exchange, SEC) and secondary sources like different publications of DSE, Bangladesh Bank, ADB, WB and IMF. Some other research papers in this line will also be used.

Money market is a segment of the financial market in which financial instruments with high liquidity and short maturities (one year or shorter) are traded. Trading in the money markets involves Treasury bills, bankers' acceptances, certificates of deposit, commercial paper, federal funds, and short-lived mortgage- and asset-backed securities.

It provides liquidity support to the global financial system (Frank J. Fabozzi et. al. , 2002). Money market of Bangladesh consists Bangladesh Bank (BB) as the central bank, 4 State Owned Commercial Banks (SCB), 5 government owned specialized banks, 30 domestic private banks, 9 foreign banks and 29 non-bank financial institutions. Moreover, MicroCredit Regulatory Authority (MRA) has given license to more than 300 Micro-credit Organizations.

A stock exchange is a body that provides services to stock brokers and traders to trade stocks, bonds, and other securities. Stock exchanges also provide facilities for issuance and redemption of securities and other financial instruments, capital events including the payment of income and dividends. Securities traded on a stock exchange include shares issued by companies, Mutual funds, unit trusts, derivatives and bonds. The initial public offering (IPO) of securities (stocks and bonds) is done in the primary market and subsequent trading of it is done in the secondary market.

A stock exchange is often the most important component of a stock market. The major functions of Stock Exchanges are:

• Listing of Companies (As per Listing Regulations).
• Providing the screen based automated trading of listed Securities.
• Settlement of trading (As per Settlement of Transaction Regulations).
• Gifting of share / granting approval to the transaction/transfer of share outside the trading system of the exchange (As per Listing Regulations 42).
• Market Administration & Control.
• Market Surveillance.
• Publication of Monthly Review.
• Monitoring the activities of listed companies (As per Listing Regulations).
• Investor’s grievance Cell (Disposal of complaint by laws 1997).
• Investors Protection Fund (As per investor protection fund Regulations 1999).

Demutualization of a stock exchange is the process of transforming a non-profit memberowned mutual organization into a profit seeking shareholder Corporation. Exchanges all over the world have been demutualizing due to increasing international competition and technological challenges to traditional modes of securities trading.

The change of a stock exchange from a member-owned organization to a for-profit shareholder corporation triggers a number of questions about regulatory oversight. In Bangladesh, Stock indices are directed by the elected body of stock brokers where conflict of interest happens. There is very poor corporate governance in the Stock Indices that is an important reason of recent debacle (Investigation Report by the Committee).

As stock dealers and brokers are familiar as institutional investors and play a big rule in the capital market mechanism, they should be regulated properly. In Bangladesh, DSE conduct inspection on brokerage houses and DSE is also run

by a selected committee of brokerage house, so one cannot expect proper judgment from the DSE.

From the table, we find that all the top investors are brokerage houses who are mainly monitored by DSE that creates many conflicts of interests. So, if brokerage houses make any big irregularity, DSE is supposed to hide it as it a member of DSE. In 2010, many positive factors along with regulatory supports (SEC, DSE) inflated the market and finally caused big losses for general investors. In case of irregularities (serial Trading, price manipulation) by brokerage houses/members, DSE had failed to make any proper investigation and also failed to inform it to SEC for regulatory actions and favored members.

In case of price bidding under book-building method, some members (associated to underwriter of the company) quoted very high and irrational price and DSE listed the securities of these companies without asking any question that rises about the transparency of the listing methods. Without stock exchange demutualization such conflict of interests could not be avoided. A stock market bubble is one kind of economic bubble that takes place in stock markets when market participants drive stock prices above their value in relation to some system of stock valuation.

Impact of Bubble: There is debate about the impact of economic bubbles among different schools of economic thoughts. Many of the mainstream economists believe that bubbles cannot be recognized in advance, cannot be prevented from forming and attempts to "prick" the bubble cause financial crises. Instead of pricking the bubble, authorities should wait for bubbles to burst by their own ways, dealing with the consequences via monetary and

fiscal policies (Robert E. Wright, 2010). Other economists believe that bubble have negative impact on the economy as it tends to cause misallocation of resources into non-optimal uses.

Robert E. Wright, a political economist argues that bubbles can be identified ex ante with high confidence. In addition, the crash that is caused by an economic bubble can demolish a large amount of wealth and might cause continuing economic depression; this view is particularly linked to the debt-deflation theory of Irving Fisher and elaborated within PostKeynesian economics. An important aspect of economic bubbles is its impact on spending habits. Market participants with overvalued assets tend to spend more because they "feel" richer (the wealth effect).

Many observers quote the housing market of New Zealand, Spain, United Kingdom, Australia and United States in recent times as an example of this effect. Possible causes of Bubble: Low interest rate policies by the Federal Reserve system are believed to have exacerbated housing and commodities bubbles. The housing bubble popped as subprime mortgages began to default at much higher rates than expected, which also coincided with the rising of the fed funds rate. It has also been variously suggested that bubbles may be intrinsic, rational and contagious.

To date, there is no widely accepted theory to explain their occurrence. Recent computergenerated agency models suggest that excessive leverage could be a key factor in causing financial bubbles. Some of the causes of economic bubble are given below: Liquidity: One of the possible causes of bubbles is the presence of excessive liquidity in the financial system that induces aggressive lending banks that make asset markets vulnerable. Economic bubbles often

occur when too much money is chasing too few assets, causing both good and bad assets to appreciate excessively beyond their intrinsic value to an unacceptable level.

Greater fool theory: Greater fool theory says that bubbles are driven by the behavior of highly optimistic market participants (the fools) who buy overpriced assets in anticipation of selling it to other speculators (the greater fools) at a higher price. According to this unsupported explanation, the bubbles continue as long as the fools can find greater fools to pay up for the overpriced assets. The bubbles will be ended only when the greater fool becomes the greatest fool who pays the highest price for the overpriced asset and no longer finds another buyer to pay for it at a higher price (Levine et. al. 007)

Extrapolation is the process of projecting historical data into the future on the same basis. If price of an asset have increased at a certain rate in the past, they are supposed to continue to rise at that rate perpetually. It says that investors tend to extrapolate past abnormal returns on investment of certain assets into the future, causing them to overbid those risky assets in order to attempt to capture the same rates of return 5 again. Overbidding on certain assets will at a point of time results uneconomic rates of return for investors and then the asset price starts to shrink (Buchanan and Mark, 2008).

Herding: Investors tend to buy or sell an asset in the direction of the market trend. This is sometimes supported by technical analysis that tries to identify those trends and follow them that

creates a self-fulfilling prophecy. Investment managers are compensated and retained in part due to their performance relative to their industry peers. Taking a conservative or contrarian position as a bubble builds results in performance unfavorable to peers that might cause customers to go to competitors and might affect the investment manager's employment and compensation.

Moral hazard: Moral hazard is the prospect that a party insulated from risk may behave differently from the way it would behave if it were fully exposed to the risk. A person's belief that they are responsible for the consequences of their own actions is an important aspect of rational behavior. An investor must balance the possibility of making a return on their investment with the risk of making a loss - the risk-return relationship. A moral hazard can occur when this relationship is interfered with, often via government policy.

A recent example is the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), signed into law by U. S. President George W. Bush on October 3, 2008 to provide a Government bailout for many financial and non-financial institutions who speculated in high-risk financial instruments during the housing boom condemned by a 2005 story in The Economist titled "The worldwide rise in house prices is the biggest bubble in history". Manipulation: Manipulation could be a very important reason of economic bubble. Especially, stock market bubble could be created through stock manipulations.

In many developed and developing countries, big investors (Both individuals and Institutional) might manipulate the stock price and could create a bubble. Recent stock market bubble in Bangladesh is mostly caused by manipulations (Ibrahim Khalid stock market probe Report, 2011) Insider

Trading: Insider trading also might be a cause of economic bubble, esp. , in the capital market. Insiders can use the hidden information to take advantage of the undisclosed news from the market and can make the stock price higher than its intrinsic value (Ronald R et. al. 993)

Other possible causes of Economic Bubble: Some regard bubbles as related to inflation and thus believe that the causes of inflation are also the causes of bubbles. Others think that bubbles represent an increase over that “fundamental value” of an asset, which finally return to that fundamental value. Finally, others regard bubbles as necessary consequences of illogically valuing assets solely based upon their returns in the recent past without resorting to a rigorous analysis based on their underlying "fundamentals".

Transaction of individual accounts is combined in this type of account that allows easier management of portfolio by the futures merchant. But this type of account could be used to manipulate stock as many individual transactions are kept hidden over there. 6 In a recent investigation, it was found that many speculative deals were made through Omnibus accounts of Merchant Banks. Report showed that each Omnibus account consists of 3000-10000 individual accounts and big market players/manipulators used Omnibus Accounts to make speculate stock prices.

Even high SEC and Government Officials used the help of Omnibus account to buy and sell share though its prohibited for them to involve invest in the stock market. (Ibrahim Khalid Committee Report) In this case Merchant Bank did not comply with SEC and Bangladesh Bank rules. As per central Bank law, shares of Banks cannot be bought in unidentified

accounts but Merchant banks did so in many cases. But SEC never raised any question about such accounts and never made any investigations to dig out irregularities that indicate poor regulations.

A stock market crash is a sudden dramatic fall of stock prices across a significant crosssection of a stock market, resulting in a significant loss of paper assets. Crashes are driven by panic as much as by underlying economic factors. They often follow speculative stock market bubbles. Stock market crashes are social phenomena where external economic events combine with crowd behavior and psychology in a positive feedback loop where selling by some market participants drives more market participants to sell.

Generally speaking, crashes usually occur under the following conditions, a prolonged period of rising stock prices and excessive economic optimism, a market where P/E ratios exceed long-term averages, and extensive use of margin debt and leverage by market participants (Galbraith, The Great Crash 1929, 1988). There is no numerically specific definition of a stock market crash but the term commonly applies to steep double-digit percentage losses in a stock market index over a period of several days. Crashes are often distinguished from bear markets by panic selling and abrupt, dramatic price declines.

Bear markets are periods of declining stock market prices that are measured in months or years. While crashes are often associated with bear markets, they do not necessarily go hand in hand. The crash of 1987, for example, did not lead to a bear market. Likewise, the Japanese Nikkei bear market of the 1990s occurred over several years without any notable crashes. Comparison of recent stock market volatility of

DSE with other markets As any sudden dramatic and persistent stock price fall is treated as stock market crash, I believe the recent price fall of Dhaka stock exchange should be called a crash.

After climbing the highest point it started to fall sharply and came down below 4000 in January 2012 less than half of the highest point. From the above analysis we can conclude that DSE index movement was not normal and the fall was so abrupt that it caused huge loss for investors. Especially investors who invested with margin loan lost everything as the index loss was more than 50%. Both BSE30 and SET are facing regular rise and fall while DSE is facing regular and sharp that indicates that the fall was like a stock market collapse and in the later part of the study I will identify this as a stock market collapse.

Previous research on this topic Many studies are done around the world to find the reasons of stock market crash and linked with regulatory issues. Recent economic crunch and stock market crash in US motivated economists to conduct in-depth research on it. In Bangladesh many analysts expressed their view regarding the capital market crash but no comprehensive research work is still done on it. Government had formed an enquiry team headed by Mr. Ibrahim Khalid, former deputy Governor of the Central Bank to make a probe into the recent activity and to identify the culprits that submitted their report to the government.

After the recent catastrophe of capital market of Bangladesh, Government of Peoples republic of Bangladesh had formed a high-powered committee in 2011

to investigate the issue and to give a report to the government within two months. The committee was headed by the ex-deputy governor of Bangladesh Bank, Mr. Khondoker Ibrahim 9 Khaled and the committee was named “Ibrahim Khaled share market probe Committee”.