They do it as a group as well as individuals and we have an instance of it on our hands again with our stock exchange's appointment of an investment bank (an exemplary case of the blind leading the lame) to find other stock exchanges in which our exchange can invest its reserves.

Now I may have this wrong here. Perhaps it is just once again an instance of the majestic self-esteem of civil servants who scorn the advice of all others in their all-knowingness. I would have thought, however, that exchange chief executive Kwong Ki-chi had been a little humbled recently by the penny-stock debacle and might have deigned to descend from his Olympian perch and ask a few other people before proceeding.

Let us assume he has. What makes it folly is that no one seems to have addressed the first question of any initiative: what is it we are trying to do here?

For the stock exchange there are three possible answers to this question. The first is to break out of its shell of being an exchange only for Hong Kong equities and give itself a wider international role. The second is to make itself a more efficient marketplace and the third - which should really be the first now that the exchange is a listed company - is to make money for its shareholders.

These need not be mutually exclusive objectives but they have certainly come to be with Mr Kwong's exclusive concentration on the first objective alone. He has come a cropper on this one.

Do you remember his much ballyhooed listing of Nasdaq stocks such as Starbucks? Our floor clerks do much more turnover at their nearest Starbucks outlet than they have ever done in the stock and I do not think many of them even drink Starbucks coffee.

There is not much doubt that Mr Kwong will come a cropper again on the latest rumoured initiative to take a stake in the American Stock Exchange (Amex).

Could someone please tell me what common ground he sees between our exchange and one in the United States for trading oil options? But why go for a minor statement of my doubts when a major one exists? Apparently Singapore also wants to buy a stake in Amex and if any group gets it wrong more frequently than stockbrokers it is Singapore's civil servants although Mr Kwong can certainly give them a run for their money.

I cannot tell you what a winning strategy might be for expanding our exchange's role and I am not sure that there is one. I can, however, offer you an excellent strategy for diminishing its role. It is to continue spending more than HK$1 billion a year for a service that can be handled at a small fraction of the cost by a good computer system and existing software.

If you want to make your mark as a stock exchange boss, Mr Kwong, I suggest you take your HK$5.27 billion 'war chest', pay it out as a special dividend to your shareholders who can do more worthwhile things with the money and then explore what you can do with computers to cut costs. Was that not supposed to be your specialty anyway?

The private sector is different, you see. Cost is an object here. You would be surprised what magic you can get by keeping costs down.