At what age did you start investing?
I don’t really remember exactly what age. But I assume it’s after I was able to make enough money that I had a little excess. I remember my first investment was not big if we’re talking about the stock market. It’s really not big. It’s like P5,000, something like that. I think it was when I was 22 or 23 years old. It wasn’t big because I didn’t know how to invest yet during that time.
Investing is, it’s a learning journey. You don’t invest just because you have excess funds. And you don’t invest in just about anything. And you especially don’t invest just because you heard that this stock’s going up, this stock is hot or this is what’s hot right now. You know, cryptocurrency Bitcoin is going up right now. You don’t invest just because the trend is going up, you invest because you know what can happen to it or what is going to happen to it. You know the history. You know the value of that particular stock or investment. Also, you don’t invest when someone says that a certain investment is guaranteed because when they say it’s guaranteed, it’s almost guaranteed to be a scam.
Nothing is guaranteed. Right? Because if it was, then the one asking for the investment would be the one investing in it, right? Why would they ask for investors if it’s guaranteed? Then, they should be the ones who will invest. There are rules to investments. It doesn’t matter at what age you’re going to be investing. What matters is that you learn. You learn the investments. That is what’s important.
Can you share with us your strategy in doing stocks? Are you a long-term investor?
Yes, I’m a long-term investor. I usually invest long-term and that’s because I can’t really trade. I can’t look at the stocks every day and make decisions and analyses every day, because I have a lot of concerns also in business.
Yeah, so sometimes clients would just have problems. My team would have problems and I have to be there to help them solve those problems. It’s five, ten minutes if your brain is hardwired in doing that every day, and you’re used to doing it every day, but I’m just not used to doing it every day.
I’m not sure where to find what I need to see, the charts, the graphs, the data. Long-term investment works for me, or copy trading works for me right now. So I’m doing a lot of copy trading right now. There are investors in the world who are a lot better at trading and investing than I am. And I would rather just copy whatever it is that they’re doing in real-time.
Can you share some investments and how you managed them?
I’ve invested in PSEi. So I have my Philippine stocks. I’m invested in Jollibee, SM. I’m invested in MPI as well. A couple of other stocks, I don’t remember which ones I don’t check often. Again, I invest long term. I don’t check every day. And then I’m invested in eToro. So I copy trade. So there are people in eToro that’s going to be recommended to you, I’m sure. I copy trade them. So they’re the one’s trading. I don’t know what they’re trading really. I’m not a hundred percent always looking at it, but I’ve made a good profit out of it.
I don’t manage my investments, really. Private investments, I do have also investment in sugar. I have a friend in Bacolod who was generous enough to allow me to invest in some of his farms. So I invested there. He didn’t need my investment, actually. I don’t know why he allowed me to invest. He didn’t need my investment. That’s one of the best investments I’ve ever made because his farms are making a good revenue, good produce, and output every year. So definitely one of the best investments. I love private investments. That’s because not a lot of people can invest in them and you get to know who the person you’re investing in.