More people, especially younger folks, are getting interested in the stock market these days. With so many brokers out there (about 132 in the Philippines, with 21 offering online services), choosing one can be tricky. Here are some tips to help you decide: 1. Old School or Online? First, you need to decide between traditional and online brokers. Traditional brokers are the ones you call on the phone to buy or sell stocks. They're good if you like talking to a real person, but they charge more for each trade, up to 1.5%. Online brokers, on the other hand, let you buy and sell stocks on a website. It's faster and gives you quick information, plus they charge less, sometimes as low as 0.25% per trade. 2. Reports and Analysis Next, think about what kind of information you need. Some brokers give detailed reports about companies, while others focus more on charts and graphs. Pick a broker that gives you the kind of information that helps you make decisions about stocks. 3. How … [Read more...]
How to invest in the Philippine Stock market – Part 4c
Stock Market Conventions and Terms This is the third installment of Part 4 on how to invest in the Philippine stock market. In the first 2 parts of this series we discussed what a stock is and how to search for stock information. Now we will discuss the first half of the stock information sheet in detail. If you wish to view the previous posts click on Financial Management and investments in the categories section and you can find the stock market series there. 3.) Understanding the stock information sheet The Stock information sheet in the Philippine Stock Exchange has two columns. We will discuss the first column first. 1.) ISIN - The first thing that you see is “ISIN.” This is the stock’s International Securities Identifying Number. This number is unique for all kinds of securities worldwide. (A security is an instrument representing a financial value, such as common stocks, bonds, debt securities, bank notes etc. ) We don’t want to go into how they assign the … [Read more...]
How to invest in the Philippine stock market – Part 4b
Stock Market Conventions and Terms 2.) Searching for stock information Previously we tackled what a stock is and other things that are fundamental in order that we might be better equipped to become stock market traders or investors. Always remember that we live in the information technology age and in this age, knowledge is power. That is why it is very important that we have a good grasp of stock market terms and conventions before we tackle the nuances of actual buying and selling. The primary source of information of stocks that has been traded in the Philippine stock exchange is no other than the Philippine Stock Exchange (PSE) itself. So we will go to the website and try to make sense of the data that is presented there. Point your browsers to the Philippine stock Exchange website (PSE)(www.pse.org.ph) You will then be presented with the front page of the PSE website. Don’t worry that you cannot understand the stuff in there, we will just tackle them later on. We will … [Read more...]