When my laptop crashed last month, my
network visibility narrowed. With limited time and internet access, I was
visiting my stock market account just to see if my target price has been
reached or my sell orders were already cancelled. Just to be sure that I won’t
miss my target price, whenever there is a chance to go online I will cancel my
current transactions and press the sell button again using GTC. However, the
market has been bearish in the past couple of weeks. Just when I thought I was
about to reach my first 100k mark in May or June. It’s like I’m asking for a
miracle. But, who knows?
I have been in the stock market for
10 months already and it got me thinking. The market is low again, is investing
in the stock market really worth it?
Just a little flashback. In July 14,
2011, I used PhP 6,000 (which I borrowed from my generous mother) to open an
account with COL Financial (formerly Citiseconline). Four days later, I bought 10 stocks in Ayala
Corporation (AC) and 100 stocks in Robinson’s Land Corporation (RLC). Did I
really understand what I did? By tracing the chart of both AC and RLC, I was
convinced that their market price was cheap at that time. As the saying goes ”Buy
low Sell high. With that quote in mind and PSE’s price chart as my pillar, I
believed that it was a sure way to make money only to realize that my knowledge
about the stock market was so juvenile.
My investment continued to grow whenever
there was extra cash until it came to a point that our household expenses were
mounting. And so the stock market took the back seat. My initial plan to invest
small amounts monthly eventually didn’t push through forcing me to use Plan B: Reinvest.
From being a supposedly long-term investor I suddenly became a trader. For
almost every single day, my attention was glued in studying the critical matters
affecting the rise and fall of the market prices, how to interpret the
different charts and a whole lot more. I would buy and sell stocks in a span of
two trading days to two weeks. But I am such an impatient trader. My short
thread of patience resulted to a bunch of regrets. There were many occasions that
I entered the market with relatively low price and ended up gaining 2% or even
lose money because I didn’t wait long enough. The next day or two, the market
price skyrocketed missing a great opportunity to yield larger numerical figures.
That happened to AAI (now BLOOM), ABS, AC, ALI, EDC, FOOD, LPZ, MEG, MPI, ORE,
PSE and RCBC.
Since last year, I was experimenting
to some extent. I was brave to test the water. In effect, I was gaining and
losing money at the same time. Blame it to my impatience and bad entrance and exit. But
as days passed by, I am becoming more cautious in choosing the stocks to buy
and when to sell. At present, I have shares in six companies and my portfolio
is completely red. Due to my inactiveness in the market lately, I wasn’t able
to sell before the plunge. But no worries, I have learned my lesson in my numerous
mistakes. For now I only have two options: (a) do nothing and (b) press the
sell button with GTC as term and hope for a miracle that my target price will be
hit in situation like this. Otherwise, to wait is absolutely a wise thing to do.
Hashtag: #Wishing upon a star.
P.S. I’m grateful that my cousin has
a laptop. That’s why I’m back with a long blog post. :)
Photo grabbed @ medrizzz.blogspot.com
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