my stock market journey with COL Financial Inc

I first entered the Philippine stock market when I opened an online stock trading account with COL Financial Inc. sometime May of 2011. My siblings opened theirs a year or two before me. My sister mentioned several times of the need to save. I didn't heed this immediately as I was convinced there was no need for it. Back then, I was consumed with the idea that I'm going to leave this Earth young, and so I wasn't compelled to prepare for my old age.

Contrary to what many believe, entering the stock market doesn't require that much funding. In the past, the stock market is a playground only for the rich. But with advancement in technology and the country's growing well-informed population, financial institutions now have created products that allow ordinary Filipino citizens to enter it at minimal cost. For as low as five thousand pesos, anyone can now open an online stock market trading account with companies such as Philstocks and COL Financial. Those with deposit accounts with BPI and Metrobank can also open a stock trading account through BPI Trade and First Metro Securities. There is NO minimum amount needed to open an account with either BPI and First Metro for as long as your settlement account (i.e., deposit account) has enough funds to buy shares. Depositors of these two banks wanting to open an online trading account only have to link their deposit account with the trading account. Their deposit account will serve as their settlement account for trading stocks.

As earlier mentioned, I chose to open an account with then citiseconline, now COL Financial Inc. I first heard of this company when I got hold of Bro. Bo Sanchez' popular e-book called My Maid Invests in the Stock Market. Though I heard of stock market trading before, I instead opted to join Francisco Colayco's KSK Coop instead and with MUCH REGRET. Anyhow, like I mentioned, one need not have a big amount of money to start trading online. Of course, you have more room to experiment if you have more money in your account. But if you're like me who doesn't have much, that's OK; the playground for the rich is still OPEN to us. Even with little amounts, we can still get exposure to the stock market. Below are the actual amounts I have placed in this wealth vehicle. As you can see, they aren't much, and my funding of the COL account wasn't even consistent.
Lesson: If you have extra money, develop the discipline to save or top-up your COL account even for as little as 1,000 a month. The idea is to make it a habit. Admittedly, this is a lesson I still have to fervently remind myself. Oh, notice the amount every December? Well folks, you might want to divert a portion of your 13th month to your COL account.

As I'm NO saver, opening a COL account has been a blessing to me. Disciplining myself to save takes much effort as I love to eat out and in 2007, I discovered the beauty of traveling (check out my other blog: vetlongwalks wanders. After each trip, I don't mind going home broke. Thus, this amount I have accumulated in COL in the span of five years is the biggest I have ever kept on my own.

[Shameful Confession: I withdrew PhP15,000 sometime last year when our salary situation got bad. Then, I will be withdrawing some of it, to fund my HK travel next month (God-willing!) See what I mean with NO discipline to save and the love for travel? This is financial suicide for me knowing I'm currently unemployed, haha! I rationalize by telling myself "Experience OVER Money". I'll figure out the money after, hehe! Plus, the amount I'll be taking out comes from the gains, and not from my original funding. :)]

How was my stock market experience like in the last 5 years?
Clearly, I'm far from earning my FIRST million, ha ha! Anyway, every blog or financial book that you'll come across will tell you to STUDY FIRST before entering the stock market. Entering into this venture without much knowledge is entering at your own risk. As I've been reading many personal finance-related materials, I'm aware that TIME is very important when investing. At my age of 31 then, I was already late as far as starting an investment portfolio goes. Thus, I opened an account even though I only know very little about this vehicle (read: Psychology background po, little to NO finance classes in UP) In my mind and as suggested in the e-book I read, I'll be OK if I'll just stick to BLUE CHIP companies and stay invested for a long time.

My Portfolio on my First Year (May 2011)

 

With only 5,000 as initial investment, I could only buy 200 shares of ALI (Ayala Land Inc.) on the first month. An additional 4,000 pesos in June and July allowed me to buy 4,000 shares of LC (Lepanto Construction and Mining Corp.) and 200 shares of EDC (Energy Development Corporation). My next top-up was only in the amount of 1,500 pesos each for the month of September and November. This enabled me to buy additional 100 share of ALI and an additional 1,000 shares of LC. As you can see from the chart above, my first year in the stock market was purely BUY transactions. If my memory serves me, as soon as I bought my stocks the prices just went down. Thus, my portfolio was showing REDS in the first few months. It made me question if I know what I was doing. Obviously, seeing the value of my money go down, I got a bit scared of putting in additional money. Early on, I made a decision to NEVER SELL at a LOSS. I kept reminding myself that I'm in this for the long term. Thus, I can afford to wait for prices to go up again.
Lesson: BE comfortable with money. By that I mean, be ready when the amount of your investment goes down. It's normal to fear, and it's pretty understandable if you feel a bit nervous. Trust me, seeing your 5,000 become 3,000 in just a few days can be disheartening and will make you question if you were sane to enter the market you know nothing about (ergo, study first makes sense now). Manage your emotions well as it can be the end of your journey if you don't. Don't panic. In the same way, manage GREED. When the market is in the UP swing, the tendency is to wait for the price to go higher. That's OK, but sometimes in the waiting---you end up missing the opportunity to get the gain in the bag. As for me, especially that my portfolio is small, even if it's just a 200-peso gain, for as long as it's an equivalent 10% gain or higher, I sell to pocket the profit. These two---fear and greed--- are the two emotions to watch out for. Experiment on how much you can tolerate. Really, there's no formula. What will work for me, won't necessarily work for you.
Luckily, the price of LC shot up in January 2012. I was giddy with excitement because I earned my first PhP2,800++ without breaking a sweat. I gained as much as 50.63% from LC. My next SELL transaction was in March of 2012, where I earned PhP1600++ or about 35.14% gain from ALI. Unfortunately, my 3rd POS (position), EDC wasn't doing as great. I first bought shares of EDC in June 2011, but after almost a year, the stock price remained down. Although I was ready to wait for a long time, my mind kept arguing that I can't afford to hold the position longer else I risk keeping my portfolio stagnant. The only chance I can see movement in my portfolio without adding funds is if I engage in active buying and selling with my available Cash Balance. Thus, I set my mind to sell EDC the moment it turned green. The amount I could get from the sale can be used to buy another POS that I think will do well. Haha, I only earned 30.82 pesos from the sale of EDC. Funny, had I waited to hold it for another week, I could have earned a thousand more instead of the measly 30.82 pesos. But that's just the nature of the market, it can go up or down when it wants to. So, no looking back when you clinched a sale transaction.

In mid 2013 until 2014, I made a decision to funnel most of my extra funds to COL. Unfortunately, by 2015 I faced employment uncertainty---which included a salary cut, undetermined salary release, leading to my resignation by mid-December 2015 and with no prospect of immediate employment. Thus, my funding of COL has temporarily stopped. My recourse to increase my portfolio is to trade actively. I managed to earn during the first half of 2015, but by the second half all my POS went back to reds. Thus, I was unable to sell. Only by end of the May 9, 2016 elections did I see movement in my portfolio. The gain wasn't that big, but at least there's movement now. Below shows the amounts I have gained in the course of five years:

My biggest GAIN so far was when I followed the advice of my brother to limit my position to just two. Prior to 2014, I'll hold as many as five positions. Since my portfolio is still small, I can't afford to diversify yet. Well, I could but I'll be limiting my possible gain. The biggest that I gained since limiting my POS was PhP5,500++ from a MER (Meralco) SELL transaction back in July 2015. Overall, I have gained as much as PhP39,836.01 in my five years of trading. This isn't much, but it's definitely more than the interest I could have gotten had I decided to save the money in the bank. Plus, NO hard-core, face-to-face selling is involved here, which suits my introvert personality. Stress isn't as great since selling only involves a click of the mouse! It is for this reason that I highly recommend investing in the stock market (with great caution!). Sure, there is the risk of losing. But as they say, only when you take a risk, will you have the chance to gain more. Aside from price appreciation, another way to earn from stock is through DIVIDENDS. If companies do well, they sometimes give their investors a portion of their profit through dividends. Below are the dividend amounts I have received in the last five years. Again, they're not much. But I appreciate receiving PhP5,175.90 as it's money I didn't break sweat to earn.

Currently, my portfolio looks like the chart below. This goes to show that while one can actually earn money from this, the possibility of losing is also there. With this portfolio, I can't see any movement of positions any time soon, UNLESS the market goes UP again. My EEI has been with me since October 2014. I don't know how long I will have to wait for this to bounce back. Still, I'm thankful as there was a time that the paper loss of EEI reached as high as 51%. Seeing that it has gone down to 23.43% paper loss is a kind of relief. Funny, this always happens every time I disobey the rule of just limiting my positions to two. Haha, this is the price of being stubborn.

All right, folks! This long account sums up my experience of trading in the stock market using COL Financial's online trading platform. I'm showing the figures to encourage anyone who may chance upon this little corner of the web to think about engaging in this particular wealth instrument. This isn't a get-rich quick scheme. You can LOSE money here! Thus, I urge that if you are still hesitant, but still want to try it out, shell out at least PhP10,000. This amount can give you enough room to play with one stock.  Just put in the PhP10,000 that you can afford to lose. Actually, ditch the idea that you'll lose here. Enter with the mindset that you will earn a little amount at a time. Stick with blue chip stocks, and don't panic when the figure turns red. It's only paper loss. You'll only lose, if you actually sell the position at a price lower than your buying price (oh, don't forget to factor in the charges when computing gain/loss).

Anyway, I'm NO expert here and I certainly haven't studied formally and still don't know how to read charts or do technical and fundamental analysis, BUT if you are ever interested to try this out and knows no one to help you out, shoot me an e-mail at vetlongwalks@gmail.com. I'll be glad to help in anyway I can, FREE of charge. But if you insist, I don't mind being treated to a McDonald's Hot Fudge Sundae, hehe!

HAPPY STOCK MARKET INVESTING, FOLKS!