MY FIRST SHARE

It’s been more than a year since I started to invest in the “stock market”. And I should say that the return is satisfactory. My desire for investing started after I read the book “Rich Dad, Poor Dad” by Robert Kiyosaki.

At first I ask around through friends about the treasury bonds.  Getting not so much information about treasury bonds, I shifted my attention to mutual funds. I spend about five months monitoring the mutual funds through the NAVPS website. A mutual fund is a good “investment scheme” because it is a pooled fund and your investment is managed by the fund manager. This is good most especially if the investor don’t have much information on which share of stock they should buy.

Then through some forum in the internet, the “stock market” got my attention. I should say that my introduction to the “stock market” is timely because of the recession. The stocks are all undervalued at that time. It’s like entering into a market and all the goods that are for sale are in a bargain price. Since I am new and I’m not familiar with the real value of the shares in “stock market”, I did found it hard which share I should be buying. To ensure some profits I bought the company that is about to give “dividends”. At least through “dividend” I can have an outright income.

There is a feeling of delight when finally I was able to buy some shares with my initial investment of PHP25k. However, that feeling suddenly change when the value of the share went down the following day and I am losing 3% of my investment. And to make the situation worse, it continue to go down on the first two weeks since I made my first purchase. I am losing around 25% of my investment. There is a panic inside of me. What if the price continues to go down in the coming days?

As I have learned, those losses are only paper loss as long as you keep your share. But something inside of me, is asking, for how long you want to keep it. I have to sell my share right away in order to minimize my loss. But deep inside of me I want to keep my share, somehow the price can still recover, and all I have to do is to wait. In about a month after my first purchase, the share price of my stock started to recover. That’s the only time that I got relieved and I am happy because I didn’t sell my share. I did receive my “dividends” and earned more because my share continues to appreciate.

I treasure that experience of holding on while my whole self is in the panic. As Mr. Robert Kiyosaki says in his book, we need to master our emotion. “Stock market” sentiment is volatile; when the “stock market” dives, it sinks with your investments. So is your emotion. If you panic and sell your share then that is the time that you had a real loss, but if you keep your share, you will only have paper loss.

I let my wife to do the “stock trading” in our other purchase, so she can also experience the same thing that I had felt. And when she is in the panic mode I told her to hold on and do not sell. I shared to her everything that I had learned from Mr. Robert Kiyosakis’ book. And it’s good that she listens to me.

Now she’s doing most of our “stock trading” activity in the “stock market”. I just give her some advice on which share to buy and which share to sell. We also kept on buying the shares with “dividends”.