VIDEO INTERVIEW Horia Gusta (AAF): The fund is chosen according to how everyone feels it suits them, like clothes: you can't wear a 56 coat, when you wear a 48. On the contrary, not so much

Many investment fund managers promote recurring investments with smaller amounts so that people can test, see how it works, understand and gain confidence, claims Horia Gustă, the president of the Association of Fund Managers (AAF), in an interview on the occasion of the 5th anniversary of the “Save Smart” program.

“It's one thing when you say you don't like the product, you don't want to touch it, and it's another thing to try this month and the next to put 100-200 lei. The fund is chosen according to how everyone feels it suits them, like clothes: you can't put on a 56 coat, when you wear a 48. On the contrary, not so much. Invest because it helps. It's good to have money set aside. After you have that emergency fund, you you can think of goals to consider. The most distant goal is retirement,” he said.

According to him, inflation is perhaps the most dangerous detail you don't take into account.

“You feel that things have become more expensive here and there, that it's almost 10%, and yet you have to do something. If you don't do something as a citizen, your money will literally fly away. It will be less and less. So you have to do something. We come and say that smart saving is a solution”, Horia Gustă states.

In his opinion, with the war in Ukraine and the issuance of money by the Romanian State and by the other surrounding states, with the ever-increasing loans, it was clear that inflation would come, and it did.

“We have said since then that there will be inflation and the only instruments that will beat inflation in the medium and long term are investments in equity funds or shares. There are no other instruments. Today, if we look, inflation is almost 10%, and if we look at the returns of the funds in the past, they were 32% and 42% in the Top 5. You win the fight against inflation if you do something. The solution is to invest your resources and save smartly.” says the AAF president.

• “The data shows us that slowly the average investment in mutual funds has gone down a little bit, which means more people are coming to try mutual funds than there used to be. Before there were fewer, but the values ​​were higher.”

He believes that in the coming years we will reap even more the fruits of these recurring investments, of these people who come.

“This year alone we have more than 22,000 new investors every month. I think we will have asset increases in the coming years, unless something spectacular happens in political or economic life. I think people will gain confidence, they will really understand how it works. I hope we have 2 million investors as soon as possible. By the middle of this year we have exceeded 1 million. We are on the right track”, says Horia Gustă.

Despite the new taxes and new needles introduced, the stock market did well

“Any company, when it has new taxes, new taxes, will transfer them to the product it sells. So Petrom, if it has a higher tax, a higher excise duty, what will it do? Will the price of gasoline or diesel increase. Likewise in the case of banks, for example, they transfer in commissions, in the difference in interest rates. That's why the stock market keeps pace, and the shares keep pace with the progress of the economy”, said the president of AAF.

He also talked about the fact that the capital market tax will increase from 2026.

“Considering the increase of the tax from 1 to 3% and from 3% to 5%, I don't feel that there will be a wave of markings at the end of the year, although the discussions about the change were from the summer,” said Gustă.

Now he believes that it is a balance in which the State's need to collect more income is intertwined, combined with the fact that withholding tax means a smaller effort for the Romanian State because it receives the money from the asset management companies until the 25th of the month for the previous month.

“Let's not forget that the investment funds and the stock market performed very well”, concludes the AAF representative.

Article supported by AAF