The Big Drop

last week saw the biggest drop in Philippine stocks in 7 years, I was obviously hit… probably lost 10,000 pesos.  I sold my Manila Bulletin (MB) stocks at a loss to get into some more SM (SMPH) stocks.  My investment in MB was ill-conceived. I saw it going down when I bought it, and it continued to go down even before the big plunge.  SM has better prospects of going up, so I bought 1000 more at 7.80 pesos a share.  here's a screenshot of my portfolio in http://www.bpitrade.com/    

Click the image below to enlarge:

And Finally….

And Finally, the last stock I bought is Manila Bulletin (MB).  I just check it out one time and wondered why it was going down.  Everybody else was up, MB is one of the top newspapers in the Philippines, it is tops when it comes to advertising, just look at their sunday edition!

 Well.. I regret having bought it, because it is still going down…

Date	Price	Shares	Amount
5/12/2006	1.38	10,000.00	13,200.00
Total		10,000.00	13,200.00

What the heck…

The newspapers have been posting press releases of Metro Pacific (MPC) going towards fixing their finances.  The people there, led by Manuel Pangilinan of PLDT, plan on spinning off a new company which will be the new holding company of MPC… or somthing like that!  So I bought some MPC stocks at 0.25 a share.

Date	Price	Shares	Amount
5/2/2006	0.25	40,000.00	10,000.00
Total		40,000.00	10,000.00

I like buying with round numbers, like if I buy .25 a share, that would then end up to be 10,000 if I buy 40,000 shares. hehe

More Mining

I prefer buying stocks whose per share value is small, so that I can buy more of it, most of the mining stocks have doubled, but Manila Mining (MA) hasn't yet.  It has increase, though.  So I bought 400,000 of those.  Well, I'm just gambling, I just made sure to buy it as it was low, and so far, the price hasn't gone lower than the price I initially bought it at: .025 pesos/share.  It closed at .027 pesos/share today.

Date	Price	Shares	Amount
5/8/2006	0.025	400,000.00	10,000.00
Total		400,000.00	10,000.00

Mining Stocks are H-O-T

Ever since the Philippine Supreme Court rendered their decision that the Mining Bill allowing foreign investors to own 100% of a mining company, mining stocks have been soaring. This only happened april this year. With the huge demand of China for commodities also fueling the need for more metals, philippine mining stocks have all doubled in value.

I was looking for some cheaper stocks, since by the time I was aware of this trend, the prices have already shot up.

I looked at two stocks that are still cheap to buy – Lepanto (LC) and Manila Mining (MA) . I read in the news that Lepanto was getting profitable, and its labor strike ended last year. I was able to buy this stock at .37/share. Manila Mining was still low because it was still awaiting approval from DENR – Department of Environment and Natural Resources, to start mining in a new location. I bought them at .025/share. I like the nice round number.

Date	Price	Shares	Amount
4/21/2006	0.37	20,000.00	7,400.00
5/8/2006	0.37	40,000.00	14,800.00
Total		60,000.00	22,200

Anyway, I bought Lepanto twice at .37/share. 20,000 shares and 40,000 shares. Then thoght I had too much of it so I sold 20,000 later at .40/share. So I gained 600 pesos less charges.

Try SM

A few weeks after my last purchase of ABS-CBN, I bought 2 batches of 1,000 each of SMPH. SM is about the open the Mall of Asia in May, so I had a feeling it will be a good buy.

SM is a chain of shopping malls by the billionaire Henry Sy

I bought the first batch at 7.80 and the next at 7.70 so my average is 7.75 pesos of 2,000 shares. As of today, the stock is trading at 8.20. Last week, it was as high as 8.70.

Date	Price	Shares	Amount
3/23/2006	7.80	1,000.00	7,800.00
4/10/2006	7.70	1,000.00	7,700.00
Total		2,000.00	15,500

I actually want to buy more SM shares, but I am not liquid. I have some other stocks I have invested (more on those in succeeding posts)

I just hope the stock doesn't climb too high.

My First Investment – ABS-CBN

The very first stocks that I bought were from ABS-CBN (ABS) . I know that they were once worth 64 pesos. During that time (January 10, 2006) they were trading at php13 . I bought 1000 shares. There was a minimal service fee and VAT of php38.61

ABS-CBN used to be the number 1 TV network in the Philippines, but a series of bad luck and bad shows has relegated it to Number 2, with GMA-7 claiming the number 1 spot.

In the coming months, this stock would plummet to about Php10.50. In order to cushion my loss, I bought some more of this stock in the coming weeks. Here's a table of my investment:

Date	Price	Shares	Amount
1/10/2006	13	1,000.00	13,000.00
1/20/2006	12.25	1,000.00	12,250.00
2/7/2006	11.75	500.00	5,875.00
2/23/2006	11.5	500.00	5,750.00
3/6/2006	11.25	500.00	5,625.00
Total		3,500.00	42,500

After March 6, the stock has been rising again so I stopped buying. Philippine stocks are quite volatile due to politics. During the period that I was buying ABS, there was an attempted coup d'etat and a tragedy that happened in one of the shows of ABS that caused its stock to fall.

on the last week of April, I was getting worried that another political rally was going to erup on labor day, so I sold my stocks at a profit of 12.75 per share. I got a little over 2,000 pesos. It would have been nice if my predictions were correct, but no, the labor day rally was quite peaceful, so the stock continued to climb. Right now, it is about 17 pesos. Ahhh well…..

I have since bought other stocks to invest in.

So that's my first taste of Online investment… it's still rooted in the old-school methods, but it's a start.