In this video, Kathleen B. Buenaobra (left) of the Philippine Stock Exchange shows Money Smarts readers how to interpret the figures on the electronic trading board that looms over the trading floor. Interest in the stock market is growing among retail investors put out by low interest on deposits.
Yup, we earned P200,000 just by showing up at the Philippine Stock Exchange trading gallery last Wednesday, November 28, 2007. Virtual money, that is!
Despite all the warnings of higher risk, disclaimers and the current volatility in the stock market, 17 MoneySmart readers who trooped to the PSE yesterday wanted to give stock investing a try. So, we agreed on a little experiment, similar to what our Money Makeover couple did last month.
We decided to each “play around” with P200,000 virtual money for one month. It works like this: we each decide how to allocate our money based on current stock market prices. We are choosing only a maximum of eight stocks that we want to trade.
Don’t forget, its the MoneySmart tour of the Philippine Stock Exchange trading gallery today. I will meet those who have confirmed at the lobby of the trading gallery. For those who cannot come, we will have pictures and videos for you 
. I have already received requests for more tours from overseas Filipinos who cannot join todays activity. No promises, dears, but I will definitely try to arrange more.
PSE, here we come!
The urge to splurge and miserly behavior are on opposite sides of the spending habit spectrum, but it’s not too hard to imagine most of us swinging from one side to the other at any given time.
That’s because everyone has weaknesses. I’m not very particular with electronic gadgets, for example, so I lived with a Nokia 3310 when everybody was taking snappy pictures with their latest model mobile phones. My friends told me that was super miserly behavior.
Get me into a kitchen showroom, however, and I will be hard-pressed to don my frugal hat. I “NEED” everything that comes with a nice kitchen, although I don’t know how to cook well! I thought I was moneysmart and was in my safety zone until the kitchen showroom came along. Then boom, sorry spending plan for 2006!
You might get a surprise visit this month from someone who will make your eyes pop out, but it’s not gonna be Santa. This article from the Philippine Daily Inquirer entitled As bad loans are cleaned up, small borrowers suffer tells of an increasing number of small borrowers who are getting visits from companies they have never heard of before, demanding payment for loans they thought were current.
Such was the experience of Alex Maravilla, who bought a small home in Bacoor, Cavite through a 25-year home loan from National Home Mortgage and Finance Corp. His housing loan was sold by NHMFC along with other sour loans to Balikatan Housing Finance Inc., whose portfolio was managed by Bahay Financial Services (BFS).
BFS is in a growing industry that believes it can make money by going after accounts that the banks have already written off. They will charge higher rates, of course, plus a host of other fees. From what I understand of how the industry works, the collection game can turn nasty. If the collection efforts do not succeed, BFS can still make money by selling foreclosed assets.
They tell me it’s hard to be grateful when you’re dead broke. As in zero moolah in your bank account and loads of debt. A good friend told me of a time he was sunk to the tune of millions and it was all he could do to face himself in the mirror in the morning.
I wouldn’t presume to know better what people should feel in those times. But perhaps it would be a good idea to be grateful while I can. After all, it’s Thanksgiving in the US, one of the holidays there that I like and want to import here in the Philippines even if there’s a lot of skepticism about it. Get Rich Slowly has a neat video and post on why Thanksgiving can be good even without turkey circa 1951!
Another reason is that I write about money every day and while I know I should be thankful for what those little coins and bills bring, it’s important to focus on the real reason why we want to fix our finances. Not for money’s sake or the things that go ka-ching, but for things like security, family, health, service to God and community, helping others and so on.
Digerati said it well:
… money is a replaceable asset, a distant second to many other things that we all wish we could permanently have and forever keep, but which we only end up receiving in what seemingly feels like short, sporadic periods throughout our lives.
So, I’m grateful for:
(Photo from AFP)
- time. Time to heal, to make amends, to start over, to think of things celestial, to ponder on light and truth, to laugh aloud
- little grubby fingers that grab you and children who hug you and make you feel you’re 10 feet tall at the end of a crazy busy day
- last week’s momentary misunderstandings, because that means hubby and I are still together after 15 years
- mom’s health and sense of humor
- two home angels who have served my family for years and keep my kalamansi juice fresh
- more than 20 articles waiting to be written, because that means I am doing what I love to do
- friends who text “ei, musta? Wala lang.”
- the feel of fresh sheets
- blogging, which makes me jump up from bed every morning. (I kid you not)
- email and the Internet, for making it possible to work at home
**turns to you, and gives you my full attention**
It’s your turn.
(Putting personal finances in the public eye does not scare Filipinos anymore. Photo from AFP)
Used to be that Filipinos would rather reveal their most embarrassing bloopers to friends rather than talk about how much they are making or how much debt they have.
Not anymore.
Pinoys are talking about their deep, dark money secrets in blogs, their investment portfolio and strategies, revealing their net worth and their biggest financial dreams, the lessons they learn along the way as they journey on to financial independence – and sometimes even their mistakes (laudable, really. After all, who doesn’t make mistakes?)
If you haven’t received your Christmas bonus yet, you probably will in the next weeks. You’ll probably be getting anywhere from P50,000 to P100,000. How are you going to spend it? Do you have a good tip on where to put that kind of money?
We gotta plan, or else even P100,000 can vanish without a trace.
(Some things you just can’t shake off like the rising peso and climbing oil prices. The sooner Filipinos accept that, the better. Photo from AFP)
Sometimes, the most effective solutions to complex problems are the simplest. Like transparency, for instance. One of the simplest ways to reduce corruption is to require government offices to regularly report audited figures on the unit cost of everything they spend public money on. As you all know, information is a currency recognized in all countries and it levels the playing field like nothing else can.
While doing research on fund transfers for an article I was writing, I was so frustrated to find so many banks holding on to remittance charges, breakdown of costs and delivery time as if these were state secrets. Some even said these were proprietary information. Duh.
The Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas’ move to compel banks to make these data available to anyone is a good move, but I hope no one shoots me for asking, “What took so long?” I mean, no one had to revise a law or hire a rocket scientist for something as simple as a policy on transparency, right?
Hot money, hot Pinoy seafarers (were you thinking of hot Pinoy hunks? Tsk tsk), hot business opportunities in medical tourism – everything’s hot today except the weather. We are expecting another typhoon…sigh. It’s always like that before or after my birthday. EVER since I was born 21 years ago. (Did you just do a double take?)
The Philippines attracted $274 million net “hot money” last October, the Philippine Daily Inquirer reported today. That’s quite a huge jump from $35.8 million in September, and totally deserves a blog post.
In this post, I wrote that hot money refers to short-term investments by foreign investors in local stocks, bonds and money market instruments. While they influence the local financial market, we need to remember that they are very speculative and can leave our shores at the touch of a button. The long-term growth of our stock and bond markets, in fact, will depend on whether domestic investors (that’s you, me and our OFW friends and relatives abroad) will begin to invest in the domestic market. Policy-makers hope a wider base of domestic investors will not be as jumpy as foreigners.
