Soviets Get Marketing Lesson From Wall Street : Capitalism: A group of fledgling traders and stockbrokers savor a chance to question American specialists.

Would-be investment bankers, stockbrokers and traders of the Soviet Union got a rare chance this week to grill American experts representing the New York Stock Exchange about everything from savings bonds to insider trading.

The opening day of a Soviet stock market is at least several months away. But Soviet financiers invited the New York Stock Exchange, that bastion of capitalism, to tell them all they could about buying low and selling high.

“We’re starved for information about financial markets,” Alla Y. Seliverstov, a lecturer at Moscow Commercial Institute, said after a session on the public debt market. “We have only one book in Russian on American financial markets.”

About 400 Soviets--government and commercial bankers, economists studying financial markets and even some fledgling brokers--attended the three days of sessions to learn all they could about how markets work in other countries and how the Soviet Union might develop its own.

“We will not leave here as professionals,” V. A. Pekshev, a deputy chairman of Gosbank, the state banking system, told an audience of both up-and-coming and longtime financial specialists. “But we will leave with an idea of how difficult it will be for us to understand financial markets.”

The Soviet Union plans to create a stock market as it makes a very complicated transition from a centrally planned economy, controlled by the Communist Party leadership, to a market-based system.

But the Soviets attending the seminar differed in their predictions on when the Soviet stock market will open. Some said within a few months, others guessed about six months and still others predicted not until the end of next year.

Many of those attending the seminar said the Soviet currency must become freely convertible with foreign currencies and state-owned industries must be converted to private ownership before a viable stock exchange can be had.

John J. Phelan Jr., chairman and chief executive of the New York Stock Exchange, was cautiously optimistic about the prospects for a Soviet financial market, although people here generally disapprove of those who buy at low prices and resell at a profit.

“If the model goes the way they think it will go, there is no reason that, within a reasonably short time, at least the beginnings of an exchange cannot be developed,” Phelan told a news conference.

The New York brokers, investment bankers and commercial lawyers at times bewildered their Soviet audience with terminology such as “over-the-counter secondary markets,” “Treasury securities” and “zero-coupon bonds,” but the Soviet participants were generally well informed.

“I was surprised at the level of sophistication,” said Richard Bernard, a lawyer who has represented the New York Stock Exchange for 14 years. “But I think there’s a huge gulf between what they know now and what they need to know to have a functioning market.”

Many of the Soviet participants suggested that practical training programs abroad could help them more than any amount of study at home.

“Some of us should go to the New York Stock Exchange and work there for a while so we understand what a stock market is like in real life and what we should be striving for,” Alexander Sandu, marketing director of a new Soviet brokerage firm, said. Sandu’s company plans to start a school early next year to instruct budding brokers and businessmen wanting to raise funds on the stock market.

“There is not one Soviet businessman who really understands the operation of a stock market,” said Alexander G. Savvin, an officer of a new Soviet commercial bank that plans to establish a brokerage subsidiary.

The many questions of Soviet participants reflected both a willingness to learn and the difficulties they must overcome in developing a market economy after 70 years of five-year plans.

“We don’t have brokers yet, but surely we will have brokers soon,” one woman said. “But what does a broker do?”

One Soviet banker pointed to the difficulties that could arise if the government tries to entice citizens into buying bonds.

“Our government issued bonds before, during and after the World War II,” Yuri N. Chetverikov, deputy director of a commercial bank, recounted. “But the government forced these bonds on us, and we earned no interest.”

Chetverikov, who has 20 years experience in foreign stock markets, said the Soviet Union will likely start with a very small market in which shares for only a few corporations will be traded.

“The Soviet Union is probably not ready for a stock market, but we have to make it ready,” he said. “It’s a crucial time--we can’t live this way any more.”

“I think a stock exchange will help us to improve our living standard,” Chetverikov said.