The Hype

I have followed with interest how the Eurex scam has been splashed across front pages, made trends on social media or just overheard people talking about it when I was out and about. What is really interesting is that I have encountered first hand purveyors of this bare-knuckled Ponzi scheme. Me and my business associate were actually invited to some location a few kilometres outside town where a brief presentation was made on how to realize an "unbelievable return". No pun intended. We left the place with more questions than answers after that. our questions were quite basic:

• Who is behind Eurex?
• How is the Organisational Structure and Corporate Governance?
• The portfolio where our investments are invested to gain this "unbelievable return" what do they consist of?
• Is the portfolio tracking a certain stock index or hedge fund?(I mean Berkshire Hathaway's portfolio return is always shown to have  beaten the S&P's index, something which can motivate a newbie millionaire to rethink of where to spend that million bucks that he just inherited from his great-grandmother?
• Where are the offices located
• Who is the customer service consultant?
• How is the return accumulated? Compounded daily?Monthly? Annually?

Well, eventually after a couple of protests, warnings and unheeded advice, the scam came to maturity and collapsed just like Charles Ponzi famous scheme. The payoffs could not be sustained due to diminishing new investors. Or rather the parties behind the scam collected and made off with hard earned money. 

Now this brings to light one or two traits I have observed about our market here in Botswana. Consumers in Botswana rely on hype for a certain product or commodity. I have spent six years trying to model the consumer behavior but it had seemed so erratic till I made a not-so-astonishing discovery: we a re HYPE driven nation. All we do is based on HYPE. Yes, it is the same for other countries but with us we rely on hear-say and would rather purchase items based on what our friends are doing. Forget Western culture peer pressure, but rather contribution by Chinese vendors to mass produce items of clothing.

Below I have listed five items that according to me are purchased/used  based on this 'HYPE':

1. Blackberry smartphone: yes BBM is great esp. BIS but functionality according to ME is its email app.

2. Leggings: need i say more

3. Twitter: the fact that you can post 'follow me @someone'

4. Alcohol: if you don't drink you aint fun

5. Online scams

What are your views?

CHECK THIS OUT:

http://blog.hyip-pulse.com/warning-eurex-trade-eccpub-and-profitable2013-scam/

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