Riding the bulls
I was constantly amazed by our country's stock index. When the US and the European stocks are swinging wildly biased on the negative side mainly fed by their weak economic indicators, ours is bucking the popular sentiments abroad. We have just breached an all time-high yesterday and foreign brokerage firms talk about a massive (major major?) bull market. I already see the positive trend of the market a few months back while the Dow and Europe are bearish. The country's economy, the corporate earnings and the general market outlook add up to a bullish run. It's only sensible to be involved in the market.
There's an old Chinese proverb that says "I hear I forget, I see I remember, I do I understand". I have been observing the market for months now. Scanned literatures. Hear from the the fundamentalists and technicians. In the end, it all barely registered in my feeble mind. Simply put, to understand the market, one has to be in the market. True enough, when I registered for an account in Citiseconline and bought my first stock shares, there are things that were not apparent to me before. The simpliest case maybe is to how the Ask and Bid boards work and how exactly the prices are driven up or down. Literatures told me of Supply and Demand. But I've learned that the major (and probably the only) factor is people's emotion. I able to sense these emotions just by looking at the day's asking and bidding prices as well as the last trades. It impacts my own emotions as well especially if I had considerable interest in an issue/stock.
While I have had my few trades, I learned a few more things. To be in the stock market one has to be a bit of a psychologist, a bit mathematician, a bit of statistician, and a full-time risk-taker. One has to be sensitive to the country's macroeconomics, corporate disclosures and business news. One has to lurk at trader's forums (cough... http://www.traderspizza.com....cough!), sift through the exchange of ideas and never believe the hype if not supported by fundamentals and general market appetite. Emotions is what drives the market, and learning to control one is a kinda tricky if not difficult. I've learned not to spread the risk across a number of issues but rather calculate the risks across 1-3 issues and maintain a margin of safety as preached by the prominent fundamentalist Benjamin Graham.On the sidelines, never ignore the charts, for they too have their story. And on that last note, the best pointer probably is to "go placidly amid the noise and haste".
As I've already mentioned, I entered the market last month, particularly the 13th of August. That's Friday the 13th on a Chinese Ghost month in case you didn't notice. Obvious indicators of the so called bad luck for some people. But August 14th's my birthday and in no way I'm considering that a bad luck. I bought LPZ on the 16th and sold 2 weeks after at 7% gain. Bought MEG the next day and sold on the same day with LPZ with almost the same gain. The two have very strong fundamentals and way below their intrinsic value but I was influenced by the market emotion and the idea of swing trading from a lot of sources when I came up with my trading decisions. It is suffice to say at the moment that I deeply regretted dumping them too soon. Their prices barely correct on the downside as they quickly became investor's preference. I then loaded up on FLI and MPI and I'm planning now to hold on to them longer. I believe they still have more room to grow.
We're in a bull market. My mutual fund has already gained 20% for the past 4 months.My plan now is to redeem it to fund my AFPSLAI account. Less risky than the stock market but also less growth. Now this is something to think about for the next couple of days before the last quarter AFPSLAI placement on October.
The stock market's undoubtedly quite on the massive upswing and quite tempting to indulge in its prospects full-time. But on the safe side, hold on to the basics of stock trading. When something goes up, it will eventually goes down given the right time and parameters. Still I have so much to learn. So far everything's working out as plan. There are a few unfortunate events this past few weeks but there's no use crying over spilled milk.
For now let's take a peek at the scoreboards. I think I'm gonna be posting the same scoreboard weekly to show and to track my progress.
There's an old Chinese proverb that says "I hear I forget, I see I remember, I do I understand". I have been observing the market for months now. Scanned literatures. Hear from the the fundamentalists and technicians. In the end, it all barely registered in my feeble mind. Simply put, to understand the market, one has to be in the market. True enough, when I registered for an account in Citiseconline and bought my first stock shares, there are things that were not apparent to me before. The simpliest case maybe is to how the Ask and Bid boards work and how exactly the prices are driven up or down. Literatures told me of Supply and Demand. But I've learned that the major (and probably the only) factor is people's emotion. I able to sense these emotions just by looking at the day's asking and bidding prices as well as the last trades. It impacts my own emotions as well especially if I had considerable interest in an issue/stock.
While I have had my few trades, I learned a few more things. To be in the stock market one has to be a bit of a psychologist, a bit mathematician, a bit of statistician, and a full-time risk-taker. One has to be sensitive to the country's macroeconomics, corporate disclosures and business news. One has to lurk at trader's forums (cough... http://www.traderspizza.com....cough!), sift through the exchange of ideas and never believe the hype if not supported by fundamentals and general market appetite. Emotions is what drives the market, and learning to control one is a kinda tricky if not difficult. I've learned not to spread the risk across a number of issues but rather calculate the risks across 1-3 issues and maintain a margin of safety as preached by the prominent fundamentalist Benjamin Graham.On the sidelines, never ignore the charts, for they too have their story. And on that last note, the best pointer probably is to "go placidly amid the noise and haste".
As I've already mentioned, I entered the market last month, particularly the 13th of August. That's Friday the 13th on a Chinese Ghost month in case you didn't notice. Obvious indicators of the so called bad luck for some people. But August 14th's my birthday and in no way I'm considering that a bad luck. I bought LPZ on the 16th and sold 2 weeks after at 7% gain. Bought MEG the next day and sold on the same day with LPZ with almost the same gain. The two have very strong fundamentals and way below their intrinsic value but I was influenced by the market emotion and the idea of swing trading from a lot of sources when I came up with my trading decisions. It is suffice to say at the moment that I deeply regretted dumping them too soon. Their prices barely correct on the downside as they quickly became investor's preference. I then loaded up on FLI and MPI and I'm planning now to hold on to them longer. I believe they still have more room to grow.
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| A snapshot of my portfolio at 30,000 initial capital |
We're in a bull market. My mutual fund has already gained 20% for the past 4 months.My plan now is to redeem it to fund my AFPSLAI account. Less risky than the stock market but also less growth. Now this is something to think about for the next couple of days before the last quarter AFPSLAI placement on October.
The stock market's undoubtedly quite on the massive upswing and quite tempting to indulge in its prospects full-time. But on the safe side, hold on to the basics of stock trading. When something goes up, it will eventually goes down given the right time and parameters. Still I have so much to learn. So far everything's working out as plan. There are a few unfortunate events this past few weeks but there's no use crying over spilled milk.
For now let's take a peek at the scoreboards. I think I'm gonna be posting the same scoreboard weekly to show and to track my progress.
Days since First Trade | Portfolio Value Gain | PSEi Gain (Same period) | ATR MF Gain (Same Period) |
25 | 13.25% | 9.34% | 12.95% |
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