Gabriel Aldea, in charge with Front Office department at Intercapital Invest got in touch with Romanian capital market seven years ago, and in 2006 he passed from broker to investor.

All started out of curiosity

Gabriel Aldea said the first contact he had with the stock exchange was in 2001 when he saw a colleague on Bucharest Stock Exchange’s webpage.

“At that point I did not know too much about Bucharest Stock Exchange. I finished my university of Management at ASE and I had the basic knowledge, but many things that were happening at the Bucharest Stock Exchange were not familiar to me,” the broker said.

His first reaction was reserved and reticent, but his curiosity was aroused by one of his engineer colleague, who invested at BSE. The first impression was rapidly turned into curiosity, at that time, Stock Exchange’s website provided real time trading.

“I found the idea of transparency rather interesting, and also the fact that you had access to these information,” he said.

Another interesting thing was that BSE’s website periodically uploaded earning reports of the companies floated at the stock market, and in 2001 was one of the few sources that gave full information on the stock exchange and investments.

First trades were made on a virtual online trading platform

First step to investment was made through an online stock trading platform provided by Intercapital – MarketMaker.ro.

“The exercise was very useful. I learned all about market mechanisms. In first month, I had 10-15% profit, and after only three months, I registered a 20% loss in the context of a market correction”, said Gabriel Aldea.

“The losses I had were extremely high, but they were also triggered by the fact that I was carrying out many transactions. The commissions at that time were considerably high, at 2-2.5%, above the curren