For me charity is helping someone by empowering them. there are many ways to this: 1) you can help a house helper who has stopped schooling due to financial problems by sending them to night school or vocational school. 2) by contributing P450 a month, you can send a less fortunate child to school thru World Vision. 3) or sometimes helping doesn’t involve money at all. I met a Filipino pastor when I used to work in Singapore who runs his own computer shop there. He conducts free computer classes to Pinay DH in SG on Sundays in his shop (so instead of engaging in “chismisan” during their day off with their fellow DH, they empower themselves by attending these classes).

So, you see, charity doesn’t have to mean giving until it hurts. And oh, it doesn’t have to involve many people. You cannot change the world overnight. But you can change the world by helping one person at a time….

When we invests in the stock market whether by making a single investment or by a programmed approach like cost averaging, we faced two inherent risk, systematic risk (overall market risk like inflation, GDP, political developments etc) and unsystematic risk (company specific risk like MEG , BW or perhaps even ENRON etc..) , based on portfolio management theories, we can minimize the volatility brought about by systematic risk by diversification (not putting everything in one basket), the ideal number of stocks in a stock portfolio varies from 18 to as much as 100 (depending on market depth/breath), we can obviously not be able to diversify a “single” stock and thus seems like “betting” the outcome of our financial goals on the prospect of a single company.

It is sad to note that in the previous years prior to this bear market we are now experiencing, investors seems easy to persuade to ignore these fundamental risks in the prospect of a better return relative to the low interest rate environment.

For ordinary investors (not trained in the intricate art of stock picking) like you and me, i think it would be more prudent and that we would have a more predictable future outcome if we do cost averaging by investing in a diversified portfolio such as a mutual fund.

thanks

for now, find peace in the middle of the storm.

If not, smile and say thanks to our Lord.. we survived that era of rampant inflation, civil disorder, and clipped liberty/freedom.

Today’s crisis is child’s play compared to that.

@Salve,
Minsa pag may kakuwentuhan akong ibang OFW, ayaw ng magpakita sa mga barkada nila pag umuuwi kasi magastos daw

Minsan kasi nahihiya yong mga customers na magreturn or exchange. Kahit ako nga dati sa US, mali yong punch. Yoko na mag-complian kasi nahihiya ako. Pero sabi ng friend ko sayang daw kaya siya ang nagreklamo.