Saving without investing is just as bad as not saving at all. This is a fact of life because of inflation. Specifically, inflation decreases the value of your savings over time. For example, the average annual inflation rate in the Philippines 1 is 5.0%. If this keeps up, the cost of living will already triple in less than thirty years. If you’re a 30-year-old saving for retirement and you had PHP 100,000 in the bank today, the real value of that sum will dwindle to about PHP 22,000 by the time you retire. In other words, in about 35 years, the purchasing power of a hundred thousand will be equivalent to the purchasing power of PHP 22,000 today. If your money isn’t growing with inflation, you are basically spending that money–the net effect is the same. To preserve the purchasing power of your money, your idle funds must grow by a rate at least equal to inflation. To achieve this goal, financially savvy Pinoys typically look at investments in stocks. The largest stocks in the Philippine stock market have generated an average annual return 2 of 8% over the past 16 years. DISCLAIMER: This article is for information purposes only. No portion of this work should be interpreted as an offer, solicitation, or recommendation to buy or sell the investment securities referenced herein. The information in this article is as of the date of publication and may have changed following said date.
Stocks (a.k.a. shares, equities) represent partial ownership in the underlying company. For example, owning shares in Jollibee Foods Corporation makes you part-owner (“shareholder”) of the iconic fast-food chain. Being a part-owner means that you are entitled to your proportionate share of the company’s profits and net worth–in principle. Although the reality is much more complicated, it is not inconsistent with this basic principle.
Stocks are identified on the stock exchange by a shorthand known as their ticker symbol. Jollibee’s ticker symbol is JFC. Though memorizing your stocks’ ticker symbols is not required, it can be handy. For example, suppose you want to search for financial buzz about Jollibee on social media. In that case, you can input $JFC in the search box (the dollar sign functions like a hashtag, except it narrows down your search to finance-related posts).
Another important aspect of a stock is its price. Jollibee’s share price is currently about PHP 220.00 per share. This represents the amount you must pay to purchase one share in Jollibee. In other words, if you wanted to invest PHP 100,000 in Jollibee, you would be able to buy about 450 shares at its current price.
There are two main ways to make money from stocks:
When the share price of a stock that you own increases (so-called “price appreciation”), the total value of your holdings increases (“capital appreciation”). Basically, if you choose your stock investments wisely, you can sell them at a nice mark-up later. For example, Unionbank’s ($UBP) share price increased by about 70% over the past year alone. If you invested PHP 100,000 in $UBP a year ago and decided to sell it today, you would profit PHP 70,000.
A cash dividend is the equivalent of interest income when it comes to stock investing. For instance, $UBP recently paid out PHP 2.80 in dividends per share. If you invested PHP 100,000 in UBP a year ago, this is like investing in a one-year time deposit that paid 5.6% in interest. (In stock investing, that 5.6% is referred to as the dividend yield.)
The combination of the two returns above is called a total return. This is the total of your profit from price appreciation and dividend income. If you invested PHP 100,000 in UBP a year ago, you would have gained a total return of about 75.6% today–70% from price appreciation and 5.6% from dividends–for a total profit of PHP 75,600.
This is why stock investing is considered attractive relative to other investment options. If you simply kept the same amount in a time deposit, you would have profited only about PHP 250–before taxes.
Individual investors’ most widely used brokers usually require an initial balance of PHP 5,000 – 10,000 to open an account.
Broker services are generally available to Filipino adults residing in the Philippines. However, minors, students, resident and non-resident foreigners, and non-resident citizens can still open accounts with select brokers, subject to additional documentary requirements. Self-employed and unemployed Filipino adults can also invest in the stock market as long as they comply with the documentary requirements to open an account; there is no minimum net worth to open a brokerage account.
There are nearly 300 stocks to choose from in the Philippine stock market alone. However, experts advise that owning less than 10 stocks is optimal 3 . Therefore, you need to be able to narrow down your choices.
There are two main ways to go about this process:
This entails selecting your favorites based on the company’s ability to grow its bottom line profits, usually referred to as net income. Stock market investors pay attention to the bottom line because a company’s stock price usually grows with the company’s profits, especially over the long term. Thus, the key to selecting stocks that will likely rise in price is selecting the companies whose profits will likely grow over time.
For example, Ayala Land’s ($ALI) stock price from 2011 to 2015 closely tracked the trend in its earnings growth.
This entails selecting stocks based on trends in their stock price. Stock prices fluctuate over time. If, for example, the price of a stock has been increasing over the past few months, the technical analysis aims to decipher whether that trend is likely to continue, stop, or reverse. If you are successfully able to predict a trend continuation, you can ride that trend and profit by selling when the trend stops.
For beginners, there is no need to build expertise in fundamental or technical analysis to start investing in stocks. The broker you open an account with usually helps with this. As part of their service, most stockbrokers usually provide expert recommendations for select stocks to aid you in deciding which stocks to start investing in. These recommendations are based on fundamental or technical analysis.
In stock investing, with high reward comes high risk. Although it is rare for investors to lose everything they invest in a stock, there is still a risk of loss. Because stock prices fluctuate, there will be times that you will see the value of your holdings decline. The realistic worst-case scenario is that you sell your stocks at a loss, i.e. you sell them at a price that is lower than your purchase price. Instances that lead to a decline in the stock price are generally brought about by a few key things.
Many investors buy a stock because they believe the company will grow profits in the future, and they expect that the stock price will grow along with it. When that belief is challenged by negative news, they may change their mind about the stock, and the stock price usually declines. This is simply demand-and-supply at work. When news about a company is negative, stockholders of the company become nervous and are quick to sell their shares, while potential buyers of the stock may be reluctant because of the bad news. Thus, there is not enough demand from buyers to absorb the supply from selling shareholders, so the stock price dips until demand and supply return to balance.
Even if a company is doing well, its stock price may still decline when bad news breaks about its place of business. Emperador Inc. ($EMP) is a good example. When the first lockdown was declared in the Philippines in March 2020, $EMP’s stock price declined by a whopping 35% in the following days. $EMP holders would have seen a third of their capital evaporate. Investors were nervous about the economy in general because no activity means no sales for many Philippine companies. For $EMP specifically, no nightlife meant no sales. However, when investors realized that $EMP may not be as affected, its stock price recovered to close the year at PHP 10.10 per share, 68% up from its low.
Although stock investing can be risky, there are easy ways to minimize the risks that experts often recommend.
The Philippine Stock Exchange authorizes stockbrokers to trade on your behalf. Having a broker is a must 4 . The most popular way of investing in the stock market is through online brokers. Online brokers function much like Shopee or Lazada for stocks: for all stocks, you can see their price, the number of shares available to buy, and even read “reviews” in the form of your broker’s research reports.
There are key criteria to use when narrowing down your search:
The Philippine Stock Exchange has an official list 5 of authorized brokers, so make sure to transact only with these names. This list is a good way to start your scan. By clicking on the names of any broker on the directory, you can get an overview of their services, including the minimum investment needed to open an account, how frequently they provide research reports, and whether they cater to retail investors (i.e., individual investors). The broker’s website and contact number are also indicated on this page, which you can use to find information for your criteria.
For illustration, below is the information page for COL Financial Group, Inc. It has long been one of the most popular online options for retail investors. For April 2022, it is also ranked third on the Exchange for trading activity and is top-ranked among those brokers available to retail investors.
The Exchange also has a list of online brokers 6 specifically. Although some of the country’s biggest banks (e.g. BDO, BPI, Metrobank) have in-house online stock trading services, it is not necessary to start trading with them if you are already their banking client (nor is it necessarily more convenient).
There are also more traditional options if you prefer to place your buy or sell orders over the phone instead of online. This is called a broker-assisted trade, and it may cost you a higher commission charge than if you place your orders online yourself.
After narrowing down your choices, it’s time for a test drive. Demo or trial accounts allow you to fully experience a broker’s services for 5 to 7 days without risking your money. Though not all brokers offer trial accounts, many popular ones do. These are also among the most competitive brokers in terms of commission, research capability, and system reliability.
For this illustration, we will use MyTrade, the online platform of Abacus Securities Corp. MyTrade is also one of the more prominent online platforms that retail investors use. Abacus Securities ranked in the top 20 brokers by trading activity this month.
Step 1: Visit the web page. Go to mytrade.com.ph and click on the Free Trial under ‘Why Trade With Us’.
Step 2: Enter basic information. The Free Trial link will take you to a form that asks you about basic identifying information and contact details. It will also ask you for your preferred username and password.
Step 3: Confirm your registration. After submitting the online form, you will receive an email from [email protected] prompting you to click on a link to confirm your registration. Make sure to verify the sender’s email address to avoid falling prey to phishing scams.
Step 4: Proceed to the platform. After clicking on the confirmation link, input your password. After logging in, click Proceed to Trading Hall.
The button will take you to MyTrade’s trading platform, what it calls the “Trading Hall”. The interface may look both exciting and intimidating for beginners, so feel free to experiment, especially with the menu encircled in orange below. Since this is a demo account, there is no risk.
Once you’ve decided on a broker, open an account with them. For online brokers, the account opening is generally done online as well. There is no need to visit their office to submit the requirements, although it is still an option.
The requirements may differ slightly depending on your chosen broker, but the common requirements for account opening include:
The above requirements are generally for employed Filipino adults. Other investors with a different profile (self-employed or unemployed, minors or students, and foreigners) may still open accounts subject to additional documentary requirements:
If you open a trading account with your bank, funding your account can be straightforward. Your bank may ask you to fill out additional forms that allow them to debit your bank account to fund your trading account.
If you open a trading account with a non-bank broker (e.g., COL, MyTrade), funding your account is still relatively easy. Often, you can fund your account as a bills payment or fund transfer (online or over-the-counter) to your broker, the same way you might use your online banking app to pay bills for utilities or transfer funds to friends. This option is often available to account holders with bigger banks (e.g., BDO, BPI, Metrobank, Unionbank) and mobile wallets (e.g., Gcash for COL, Coins.ph for MyTrade).
For beginners, it is advisable to start with stocks that have established names. Since owning a stock represents partial ownership of the company, it is best to start off focusing on the stocks of companies that are most unlikely to go bankrupt in the foreseeable future. These companies, so-called “blue chips,” tend to be household names that are larger, more mature, and have dominant positions in growing industries. For a more in-depth guide to selecting such stocks, please refer to our article about investing in blue-chip stocks.
Once you’ve decided on the first stock you want to buy, the next step is to place your order. Generally, you can only place orders to buy a stock when the stock market is open. The market is open on weekdays (except holidays) from 09:30 AM to 12:00 PM for the morning session and from 01:00 PM to 03:30 PM for the afternoon session.
The process for entering a buy order generally follows the following steps:
Step 1: Get a quote for the stock. Regardless of the broker you choose, they will typically have a dedicated tab/link for a quote screen. The quote screen for stock shows you the price at which you can buy the stock you want. Below is an example of a quote screen.
The quote screen can be confusing for beginners since multiple prices are displayed for one stock. The key information to know is as follows.
Step 2: Place an order. Like the quote screen, there is usually a dedicated button/link to place an order, usually named ‘Trade’ or ‘Order’. Below is an example of an order screen for a COL client. The image on the left is what you will see when you want to buy, and on the right is the screen for a sell transaction.
Entering orders via online platforms is generally user-friendly, but there are still some things to clarify for beginners:
An order quantity that doesn’t comply with this minimum number is called an odd lot. It is still possible to trade odd lot orders but the market for odd lots can be illiquid (e.g. if you’re looking to buy, there may not be sellers that can fill your order) and the prices quoted can be unfavorable.
A day order will be posted for the entire day. If that order isn’t filled by the time the market closes, your order will be canceled.
A GTC order is short for “good ‘til canceled”. If your GTC order isn’t filled within the trading day, it will still be posted in the following trading days until the order is filled or you cancel the order.
An ATC order is short for “at the close”. The order will only be posted when the market nears its closing time. Your order will be filled at the closing price.
Once you place an order, your broker will notify you if the order has been filled. If it was filled, you now own the stock. For your own safety, it is good practice to monitor how your holdings are doing regularly. After all, as a shareholder, you are the owner of the business.
How much time you can dedicate to monitoring depends on you and your style. If you are big-picture-oriented, you can opt to do this quarterly or annually. If you bought the stock with the expectation of a quick profit, you can monitor the stock daily, weekly, or monthly. Regardless of how frequently you choose to monitor your holdings, there is key information to keep track of:
a. General news. As mentioned before, even if the company whose shares you own is doing fine, the stock price might decline temporarily if there is something negative occurring in the broader industry or economy. Your broker’s daily reports and strategy reports are usually a good resource for such monitoring. The best brokers have dedicated teams monitoring the daily news and filtering that information to only the stories that matter. These teams are often headed by prominent research heads whom you might even see on TV occasionally. This makes general monitoring easier for you because it prevents information overload.
b. Company-specific news. As mentioned before, company-specific events are the primary source of risk and reward for the stock that you own, so it is necessary to regularly update your knowledge of the company. Your broker’s research team is also a great resource for this. Aside from that, you can also monitor mandatory disclosures.
As a requirement for listing their shares on the stock exchange, the Philippine Stock Exchange requires companies to disclose to investors any event that may have an impact on the stock price. Such disclosures are available in PSE Edge. Below is a snapshot of what the PSE Edge homepage looks like. From there, you can type the name of your stocks in the search bar to see their latest disclosures. This is a good alternative way of gaining access to information without waiting for your broker’s research team to produce their reports.
c. Price charts. It is also good practice to monitor how the stock price has trended recently. This is best done by looking at the stock’s chart. Online brokers often have this capability built into their platforms, but there are also many online services that are dedicated to stock monitoring. Locally, Investagrams or Tsupetot are examples of such services. They come with free and paid options, and they allow you to monitor your stocks’ price charts and set up alerts when your stocks reach a certain price level.
Below is an example of a price chart for SM Prime Holdings, the SM Group’s property development arm. Stock charts differ from regular charts in a few respects:
Each candlestick corresponds to one trading day, and it shows you what happened during that day. The “wicks” (the thin lines at each end of the bar) show the highest and lowest traded price during the day, and the ends of the body show the opening and closing price of the stock for that day. A green bar indicates that the stock closed higher than its previous close (it was up for the day), and a red bar indicates the opposite.
As you advance in your investing journey, this format will become even more useful because some traders (or technical analysts) believe that a single candle can predict what happens next based on how the bar looks.
If you are satisfied with your profits or no longer willing to tolerate your losses, or if you simply need cash for personal reasons, you may decide to sell your stocks. The process of selling a stock is the same as buying a stock. When your sell order is filled, the proceeds from that sale remain in your account as a cash balance. From there, you may opt to do either of two things:
Note that you can only withdraw the proceeds from a stock sale after 3 working days following the sale. This is because the sale goes through the settlement process before the actual proceeds are available for withdrawal.
In terms of orientation, traders focus on quick short-term gains (a matter of only weeks, days, or hours) while investors focus on longer-term profits (months or years). Traders rely on technical analysis for their decision-making, while investors focus on fundamental analysis.
If you buy a stock on its ex-date, you are not entitled to receive a recently declared dividend. Stock prices usually dip slightly during their ex-dates.
This is short for initial public offering. Note that not all Philippine companies are listed on the exchange. When a previously private company decides to list on the stock exchange, it does so via an IPO.
This is the value of the company’s shares in its books. The par value is simply an accounting value and has no bearing on the stock price.
Preferred shares are shares that promise to offer a set dividend yield. The price of preferred shares does not fluctuate, so the only way to make money from preferred shares is via the dividends.
This is a way for you to borrow more money from your broker to fund a stock purchase. Buying shares with borrowed money is called a leveraged trade, and it offers the opportunity to magnify your gains because all the profit from the trade goes to you. However, it also magnifies the risk. The absolute worst-case scenario in stock investing is to lose 100% of your capital. However, in a leveraged trade, you can lose more than 100% because some of your capital is borrowed.
Garie Ouano is an investment professional with 8+ years of research experience covering local and international equities and bonds. He has also been a CFA® charterholder since 2018. As an advocate for financial literacy, he regularly volunteers for the CFA Society Philippines. He has recently shifted from research to corporate finance and is doing work for a leading logistics company. In his spare time, he is preoccupied with Pinoy food, the horror genre, and cats. For inquiries, you may reach him via email ([email protected]).
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