Polish market is home for gaming companies says Warsaw bourse CEO

The Warsaw Stock Exchange (WSE) is a leader when it comes to listed gaming companies, President Marek Dietl told Bloomberg television on Friday on the 30th anniversary of WSE.

"We have over 60 (gaming - PAP) companies listed on our venue, more than Tokyo or Seoul, so we're a clear market leader in terms of the number of gaming companies listed," Dietl said.

According to Bloomberg, WSE trades 56.1 percent of the gaming market.

“The WSE has also developed a fund-raising platform for game titles rather than studios or developers,” Dietl continued. "There's really great interest from investors to invest in a particular video game, not in a studio as a whole," he added.

The Warsaw Stock Exchange was launched in 1991, just two years after the collapse of communism in Poland. Its first location was more than iconic, as it was housed in the former communist party's headquarters in central Warsaw, which was seen as a symbol of the fledgling democracy fully embracing the market economy.

Dietl also told Bloomberg that the WSE has seen an increased interest in trading from individual investors.

"Retail investors are absolutely key to our volumes," the bourse CEO said. "About 25 percent of our trade is done by retail investors."

"It's up 12 percent from 2019," he added.

Explaining the rise, Dietl said that "it seems that during the pandemic people have more money and more to spend on the exchange and also more time to trade."

According to him, individual investors are most interested in the gaming industry and biotech companies, but often they are also intraday traders.

Intraday traders are extremely short term investors who try to close a trade within one day.

Dietl also pointed to an increase in social media activity among individual investors, calling them "a new generation of investors." They "have been building unofficial investment clubs and looking for really high-risk and high-return stocks."

Citing an incoming report, Dietl said that "if you look at social media and the sentiment for given brands you can quite well forecast the returns from stocks."

Only five companies were listed on the WSE in April 1991, when it was launched, and that compares to more than 400 on the main market today. The WSE joined a group of developed markets in 2018, just 27 years after it started its operation.