I first learned about stocks two years ago, that was in 2006. But then I did not take it seriously. The first trade that I did was a JFC stock thru BPI Trade, the online trading platform of BPI bank.

I remembered, I bought 100 shares of JFC at above market value back then just to have a match with my buy order because I have been placing my order for a few days already but there was no match. The market value was Php 42 and I bid for a buy at Php 44. Presto! It’s an instant match! But not into my advantage because I bid for a high price just to have a match.

With my high bid, after several days, I didn’t see the stock rising and so I sold it at a loss of around Php 150. Since then, I didn’t come back to stock trading.

It was in September 2008 when my stock trading adventure began. I was inspired by a comment coming from Ronnie in one of my articles before which was unfortunately deleted already. He said that he was able to reach his goal of becoming a millionaire at the age of 25 having huge profits from the stock market when he started investing aggressively during its peak in 2006 and 2007.

For the first few weeks, I’ve been experiencing a gain of around Php 7,000 with a strategy of a short-term investor. I didn’t plan to hold on stocks. I just “timed the market” with the golden rule of buying low and selling high because from my point of view, the stock market was very volatile as an effect of the global financial crisis with investors’ rampant fear causing trillions of wipe outs in stock market.

However, huge amount of losses started when Lehman Brothers filed its biggest bankruptcy in the history causing tremendous wipe outs in stock value. I was tempted to buy stocks nowadays because of its huge decline coupled by the fact that I am still young and has a lot of time before retirement and therefore can ride the volatility of the stock market. However, I don’t want my extra cash to be frozen in stocks waiting to appreciate its value since more than 20% of my networth is already invested in stocks. I think that’s enough.

Recently, I visited the company disclosures with regards to dividend payouts. I was lucky I was holding two stocks, AC and ALI, that declared cash dividends! I am about to receive a passive income for those two stocks next year.

  • Ayala Corp. (AC) P2.00/share cash dividend. Exdate Jan. 6. Payment date Feb. 3
  • Ayala Land Inc. (ALI) P0.03/share cash dividend. Exdate Dec. 2. Payment date Jan. 8

My stock trading excel sheet file was posted here for readers to see. I am hoping that the stock market will soon rise again in the near future.

For newbies in the stock market, I recommend you to read my article on how stock market works to familiarize yourself in stock market trading and have your own stock trading adventure.

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