Stephanie (not her real name) looked a bit like a lost little girl, no different from her eight-year old daughter who transferred to my son’s school. Turns out that it was her first time to attend a school activity. She has been at sea on cruise ships for the last 15 years, going home only once a year – one of 230,000 sea-based Filipinos working abroad.

We had a lengthy and very interesting discussion about what it was like at sea for the past 15 years, starting from when she was a fresh graduate of Hotel and Restaurant Management from a reputable school here in Metro Manila, up until she decided to get pregnant (but not get married) and now that she is waiting for her call to join the crew of another cruise ship.

Stephanie’s story amazed me, although it was not the first time I had heard of the challenges and experiences of Filipino sea-based workers. She told me how Filipinos earn anywhere from $2,000 to $4,000 a month, bulk of which come from tips from passengers. She also described how Filipinos burn their money buying clothes, bags, laptops that they never get to use, mobile phones and other techie gadgets from different ports even when these could also be bought in the country at the same price or even cheaper.
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Investment professional Alijeffty Gonzales has a simple idea for Filipinos working overseas who want, at the very least, to protect their capital and still get their feet wet in the equities market at the same time.

In his blog post here, he says any OFW can do this by putting at least P13,699 in Landbank’s long-term negotiable certificate of deposit and investing P6,301 for any equities fund of his choice and voila – you have an equity-linked note or ELN. Sounds highfaluting, eh?

An ELN basically combines a zero-coupon note with an instrument that invests in more volatile (exciting) securities like stocks. As the zero-coupon returns 100% of the face value at maturity, any residual value of the stock portfolio becomes “gravy” at the concurrent reckoning date.

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State-owned Landbank of the Philippines’s sweet deal for OFWs launched yesterday is described in this article.

An annual interest of 7.0% and a maturity of 5.5 years is not bad for anyone’s portfolio. Experts always tout diversification and to do that properly, the risky part should not overshadow the secure and boring part. How to cut the cake exactly depends on personal risk appetites, of course.

It is a fact of life that stocks are sexy and deposits and bonds are boring. ☺ Most of the times, boring is good.
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The Western Union branch on West Avenue in Quezon City is nearest to my place, so one morning a few weeks ago, I went there to get a remittance from a friend in the US who asked me to buy Swarovski stuff for her hobby.

I was in a hurry, so I asked Western Union to give me the remittance in pesos. The girl at the counter said their exchange rate was P39.30 to a dollar!

I was outraged. I said, “That’s too much!” I just came back from Bank of the Philippine Islands and Banco De Oro and they were converting at P40.40 to P40.30. That’s an almost one-peso difference. Aren’t they satisfied with the huge remittance fees they charge? [Read the rest of this entry »]

(Good old days for the dollar! This was taken November 27, 2003. File photo from Agence France-Presse)

For the longest time, the dollar has been the darling currency of the world. In an earlier post, I asked if it was a doomed currency, but as a good friend pointed out, if it is really the end of the road for the greenback, why do its hiccups still affect world markets?

More and more, however, other currencies are starting to shine. So here’s a quick tip for overseas Filipino workers struggling with the weakening dollar: get paid in the local currency.

Of course, this will only work if you are not working or living in the United States. (Duh). Several of my friends, for example, work for Canadian companies. Instead of getting paid in the US dollar, which was the currency of choice for the longest time, they decided to get paid in the Canadian dollar. It proved to be a good plan as the US dollar slid continuously the whole year.

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(Grass always seems to be greener on the other side.)

For years, I have been fairly immune to the most zealous “invitations” to relocate overseas. It started with my mom back in college when I was still single. Now, people are talking about not just living in the US for good, but also in Canada, Australia, New Zealand and in other Asian countries.

They tell me I can always go back to the Philippines if it doesn’t work out. But I have to make sure I am not letting the opportunities pass by, they say. If I don’t want it for myself, I should consider it for the kids.

I’m sure you know what I mean when I say the “invitations” can get really insistent. So much so that my sister has already made the jump. She is working on bringing her entire family to Canada to live there for good. Then another sister will leave for the UK this year. Another one is raring to restart her life in New Zealand. They are looking for better jobs, better benefits, more pay. They are professionals who have good education in good universities. Their careers here are promising. But some say that with the endless jockeying in politics, corruption and pollution here, why not go for the “greener” pastures in other countries.
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For many Filipinos, stocks, bonds and mutual funds sound too complicated. Bank deposits are still the darlings of saving and “investing” and lately, they have been getting a facelift. Yesterday, they were marketed directly to Filipinos working overseas.

Long-term negotiable certificates of deposit, bankers call this product. Trust bankers and investment managers to come up with a mouthful of a name! MoneySense says if you want an easy way to remember, break it down per term.

LT is for long-term, N is for negotiable and CD is for certificate of deposit. In other words, it’s a hybrid product. See that wasn’t so hard, says MoneySense. Right on!

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Willy Arcilla is the image of the consummate Filipino executive OFW. He speaks with a neutral accent-slash-zero twang, is always in a suit (at least during the last couple of times I saw him in a public event), attentive all the time, and hands out his calling cards in that endearing Asian way (holding the lower left and right corners with forefinger and index finger).

I first met him at a press conference raving about Vietnam’s economic miracle. Here was yet another Filipino who had the skills this country needed, but loved another country other than his own, I thought. I was wrong.

Willy is one of the growing number of Filipinos who have gone against the tide of migration at a time thousands move out on a daily basis. And as regional manager of executive search firm ZMG Ward Howell, he is now helping other professional OFWs find well paying and challenging jobs right here in the country.

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I find it remarkable that quite a number of INQUIRER.net readers are raring to invest in local stocks considering that those in more advanced markets are still stumped by subprime worries. From the kind of emails and queries I receive, the gung-ho attitude is not borne of ignorance but of a desire to be part of the action in the capital markets and a hope that owning stocks will make retirement so much better. From what you tell me, I can sense that the “prestige” of playing with stocks is a big part of the equation too.

Perhaps some of you are thinking of investing your Christmas windfalls instead of spending them. Or for OFWs, investing will hasten the days for your final homecoming. Investing in equities is a personal choice, and one that might work for some and not for others. To begin, the first thing that you have to do is get a broker. The Philippine Stock Exchange requires investors to be represented by a broker before they can own or sell stocks.

For many who are not in the country physically, setting up an account and making phone calls made to brokers can be quite expensive. Online brokerage accounts have become convenient ways of investing in the stock market because communications via email lessen the cost. Secure websites that display personal accounts add to the attractiveness of this option.

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From the looks of it, Gnoysa is likely to win the forex trading game with a P41.56 forecast for end of December!

The peso on Wednesday breached the P41 level, hitting P41.99 before closing at P42.03 against the dollar. When the forex market opened this morning, the peso was at P41.90 again and the weighted average as of 10.44 a.m. today was P41.887 to the dollar.

Both inflows from overseas Filipino workers sending money home for the holidays and investors taking positions in the stock market lifted the peso further. And because we all expect the money to continue to come in, this only means you gotta get ready to see the peso rising even more in the next weeks.

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