Tag Archives: Stock Market

Are You an Aggressive Investor?

October 26 10:42 am ,

To Whichever Way the Water Flows

You have a private equity fund. And you say to yourself, I have arrived.

But, have you?

Because, in fact, it may take you longer to arrive.

First things first. Let me explain what a private equity fund is (but please bear with me – we will be going a little technical here). It is typically a limited partnership, in which the private equity firm acts as the general partner and accredited investors fund the investments of the partnership. According to Daniel R. Solin in his book, The Smartest Portfolio You’ll Ever Own, the average returns on equity funds, net of fees, were 3% below that of the S&P 500 (an index that consists of 500 stocks weighted by market value, often incorrectly used as a benchmark for the performance of the US stock market) and fees were a whopping 6% a year.

The fraud (it is fraud) does not start, or end, with private equity funds.

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Posted in: Investing , Tagged: , , , , , , , ,

The Working Woman’s Guide To Riches

January 26 1:08 am ,

Believe

Sometimes, a woman needs a guidepost, a road map to where she wants to be.  Most of the time, her goals involve wealth, or ways to wealth.  Here are some methods that are tried and tested.

1.  Make a financial assessment.

A woman should know how much she has before she can decide what to do with how much she has.  For many, this starts a series of wake-up calls, not to mention panic attacks.  But wake up calls are good, and panic attacks are good because they set off something in the brain that makes it go to preservation mode.

Here is where the expensive coffee and clothes and bags and eating out and traveling have to go.  Or at least cut by as much as seventy five percent.

Because to be wealthy is to carve out and use that seventy five percent for something that can bring in more income (read: investment).

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Posted in: Financial Education , Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Abundance for the New Year

January 2 10:50 pm ,

The Green Book: On Saving

I found this lone piggybank in a toy store and embraced it right away, looking suspiciously to my left and to my right to check if someone will get it from me.

No other takers.  I breathed a sigh of relief.

Kidding.

But to tell you the truth, when I got it, I initially thought of giving it as a gift to one of my nephews or nieces but then as the countdown to Christmas lost digit after digit, I started wanting it for myself (it would be perfect too for my daughter…).

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Posted in: Financial Education, Financial Planning , Tagged: , , , , , , , , , ,

Why I Got Out of the Stock Market

May 15 11:23 pm ,

Harvest Time

One year.  That was how long my relationship with the stock market has been.  But there was a pre-story, which was training, lots of training, before I found the heart to jump in and play for real.

And to jump out too.  But first things first.

Flashback to 2008.  Giddy and excited and with fake money at hand, I started with the online stock exchange (it offered a practice account).  Prepped by my financial planner, pumped up with some reading I had done here and there and some monitoring of the market, I found I gained some fake USD$600 in a few months.  But I since I was in no real danger of getting poor or rich, I soon found myself bored.  The market bottomed out too, wiping my gains, but ironically, it was also the perfect time to get in for real, to play for real.

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Posted in: Financial Education, Stock Market, The Basics of Finance, The Philippines , Tagged: , , , , , , , , ,

Increasing Your Financial Intelligence Series: Ways the Prices of Security Are Being Manipulated

September 15 10:56 pm ,

Five years ago, I would not have given it any thought.

In fact, if I come across finance terms, I would hardly give it a glance.  Worse, it would not even penetrate my consciousness.  I would not even see it, period.  But it is true what they say.  What you do not understand or know at first, if you keep at it, it would have no choice but take on meaning.

With a little help from Investopedia and the Securities and Regulations Code (SRC), let me share with you the ways by which the prices of securities (stocks, for our purpose) can be manipulated.

Do not be fooled.  The business of stocks or securities is serious business.  The big boys make the stock market their playground, their very own money mill, if you please.  If you are not careful and fall prey to their schemes, well, you can kiss your hard-earned money goodbye.

But the point of education is to make you more aware of the pitfalls.  Half of winning is knowing.

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Posted in: Stock Market, The Basics of Finance , Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , ,