Opinion – Marcos de Vasconcellos: Market full of sharks could be healthier, warns science

We have 19.6 million companies active in the country. Disregarding micro-enterprises, small businesses and individual micro-entrepreneurs, there are 1.2 million companies of all sizes and purposes left. It is not possible that only 453 of them have the capacity and interest to be on the Stock Exchange.

The numbers above, updated by the federal government itself and by B3 (the company that manages our Stock Exchange), reveal what many investors notice when entering the equity market: they only talk about the same stocks.

If we take a representative of each company on the Brazilian stock exchange, it is not possible to fill a WhatsApp group or a plane of the type that makes the São Paulo-Dubai route, the Airbus A380.

and why this happens? Because we have an immature business environment, still based on very familiar and unprofessional companies? Due to the lack of IPO windows (a period when it is more interesting for companies to go public and sell their shares than to get credit in the market)? Because of the return of double-digit interest rates, what drove investors out of the equity market?

The answer is a yes to each question above. Added to many other factors. And the problem is that this makes our market unattractive to the world.

See that, with less than 500 companies, the market has already attracted more than five million people. Interesting number, but it is necessary to understand that the volume traded by all these CPFs did not reach 20% of the values ​​traded on the Stock Exchange in the last year.

Institutional investors, national and international, concentrate the true volume of business. You can say that they are the ones who command the values ​​of the assets. And expanding the menu to offer these investors can increase their appetite for our market. And we want more “sharks” in these waters.

This is because increasing the number of players (especially the large ones) in our stock market serves to make it more resistant to scams, fraud and malfeasance. And who says that is science.

Mathematician Tiago Pereira da Silva, from the University of São Paulo, studies complex networks and their interactions. Simply put, he researches how the actions of each member of a network influence the entire network and how changing conditions affect interactions.

Because it is about mathematics, Pereira da Silva’s studies apply as much to our neurons as to our behavior among friends or to the functioning of heart cells. And a beautiful example of a complex network, full of interactions among its most varied members, is the stock market.

He explains that studies that relate this area of ​​research to that of behavioral economics indicate that the presence of influencers, that is, players that interact with many other points in the network, is good for avoiding bad practices.

The experiments are focused on cooperative and public games, that is: some know the strategy used by others. And the main example is the game in which there is a pot on the table in which, at each round, players must deposit an amount of money, which will be multiplied by a factor and divided equally among everyone (including those who did not cooperate).

In the short term, those who contribute nothing gain more. But the strategy starts to be copied by others, leaving everyone starving in the medium term.

In larger groups and with more influencers, the stabilization of collaboration is faster, in “win-win” situations, in which everyone agrees to win less, as long as they don’t lose, elevating the whole.

In smaller groups and with fewer large players, it is easier for some group members to earn a lot but leave others in a bad light.

Of course, the examples are not identical to the real world. Between theory and practice, there is always a bumpy and bumpy road. But it is interesting to see experiments showing how, with transparency and clear rules, having many large players operating is good for the evolution of the market, without this being done at the expense of unsuspecting investors.

Instead of fighting the sharks, the ideal seems to be to attract others, so that none of them feel comfortable killing the school. This is yet another reason to be concerned about having an attractive and clean market that attracts the attention of global investors.

This column was written for the #scienceinelections campaign, which celebrates Science Month. In July, columnists reflect on the role of science in the reconstruction of Brazil.

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