Being an investor in these times of crisis is not easy. It is hard to manage emotions and despair of seeing your portfolio declining. In an interview for Wall-Street, Cristian Rizea, investor at Bucharest stock market since 2002, founder of www.labursa.ro portal and manager of Unic Sol talks about how he managed, computer programming, management, stock market and forex at the same time.
Experience with FNI was very helpful
The story is rooted in the early years of college. Although he graduated University of Automatics and Computers and he is passionate about programming, Cristian Rizea started to be interested in the capital market since ‘97-’98. “I started to follow the evolution of the stock market in 1998 and I was already thinking about investing. However, at that time, I had my savings at FNI.”
The loss did not make him let down guard, but on the contrary, it spurred him to move on, this time on his own.
“After raising money again, in 2002 fall, I found the courage to start all over again with one of my colleagues. I started at Intercapital Invest, but the account I was assigned with required a lot of my time, therefore, one month after I went to Vanguard, the only company in Romania at that time that had an online platform,” Rizea said.
Here is where he started the actual activity as an investor; on his own, with online platform ahead of him and with the experience he had in computer programming. “I don’t remember with how much I started, but I think it was 80 million old lei”, Unic Sol manager said.
The start was special. After the “sad” experience with FNI, few months after the first investment, Rizea saw his portfolio down 20%. “It was a helpful lesson at that time; I understood I still had a lot more to learn. Practically, I started from the premise that I had a choice, whether I leave my money in the bank or try to dup
