If all I have is ten dollars and I risk it, I am much braver than when I risk a million if I have another million salted away.

I’ve got friends, of course, but my business has always been the same – a one-man affair.  That is why I have always played a lone hand.

What beat me was not having brains enough to stick to my own game – that is, to play the market only when I was satisfied that precedents favoured my play.  There is the plain fool, who does the wrong thing at all times everywhere, but there is also the Wall Street fool, who thinks he must trade all the time.  No man can have adequate reasons for buying or selling stocks daily – or sufficient knowledge to make his play an intelligent play.

It happened just as I figured.  The traders hammered the stocks in which they figured would uncover the most stops, and sure enough, prices slid off.

For one thing, the automatic closing out of your trade when the margin reached the exhaustion point was the best kind of stop-loss order.

The game taught me the game.  And it didn’t spare me rod while teaching.

If somebody had told me my method would not work I nevertheless would have tried it out to make sure for myself, for when I am wrong only one thing convinces me of it, and that is, to lose money.  And I am only right when I make money.  That is speculating.

I knew of course, there must be a limit to the advances and an end to the crazy buying of A.O.T.-Any Old Thing-and I got bearish.  But every time I sold I lost money, and if it hadn’t been that I ran darn quick I would have lost a lot more.

Early that fall I not only was cleaned out again but I was so sick of the game I could no longer beat that I decided to leave New York and try something else some other place.  I had been trading since my fourteenth year.  I had made my first thousand dollars when I was a kid at fifteen, and my first ten thousand before I was twenty one.  I had made and lost a ten thousand stake more than once.  In New York I had made thousands and lost them.  I got up to fifty thousand and two days later that went.  I had no other business and knew no other game.  After several years I was back where I began.  No-worse, for I had acquired habits and a style of living that required money; though that part didn’t bother me as much as being wrong so consistently.

There were times when my plans went wrong and my stocks did not run true to form, but did the opposite of what they should have done if they had kept up their regard for precedent.  But they did not hit me very hard – they couldn’t, with my shoestring margins.  My relations with my brokers were friendly enough.  Their accounts and records did not always agree with mine, and the differences uniformly happened to be against me.  Curious coincidence-not!  But I fought for my own and usually won in the end.  They always had the hope of getting from me what I had taken from them.  They regarded my winnings as temporary loans, I think.

Don’t misunderstand me.  I never allowed pleasure to interfere with business.  When I lost it was always because I was wrong and not because I was suffering from dissipation or excesses.  There were never any shattered nerves or rum-shaken limbs to spoil my game.  I couldn’t afford anything that kept me from feeling physically and mentally fit.  Even now I am usually in bed by ten.  As a young man I never kept late hours, because I could not do business properly on insufficient sleep.

For instance, I had been bullish from the very start of a bull market, and I had backed my opinion by buying stocks.  An advance followed, as I had clearly foreseen.  So far, all very well.  But what else did I do?  Why, I listened to the elder statesmen and curbed my youthful impetuousness.  I made up my mind to be wise carefully, conservatively.  Everybody knew that the way to do that was to take profits and buy back your stocks on reactions.  And that is precisely what I did, or rather what I tried to do; for I often took profits and waited for a reaction that never came.  And I saw my stock go kitting up ten points more and I sitting there with my four-point profit safe in my conservative pocket.  They say you never go broke taking profits.  No, you don’t.  But neither do you grow rich taking a four-point profit in a bull market.

I think it was a long step forward in my trading education when I realised at last that when old Mr Partridge kept on telling other customers, “Well, you know this is a bull market!” he really meant to tell them that the big money was not in the individual fluctuations but in the main movements-that is, not in reading the tape but in sizing up the entire market and its trend.

The market does not beat them.  They beat themselves, because though they have brains they cannot sit tight.  Old Turkey was dead right in doing and saying what he did.  He had not only the courage of his convictions but also the intelligence and patience to sit tight.

Disregarding the big swing and trying to jump in and out was fatal to me.  Nobody can catch all the fluctuations.  In a bull market the game is to buy and hold until you believe the bull market is near its end.

Remember that stocks are never too high for you to begin buying or too low to begin selling.

Suppose he buys his first hundred, and that promptly shows him a loss.  Why should he go to work and get more stock?  He ought to see at once that he is in the wrong; at least temporarily.

The Union Pacific incident in Saratoga in the summer of 1906 made me more independent than ever of tips and talk – that is, of the opinions, surmises and suspicions of other people, however friendly or however able they might be personally.  Events, not vanity, proved for me that I could read the tape more accurately than most of the people about me.  I also was better equipped than the average customer of Harding Brothers in that I was utterly free from speculative prejudices.  The bear side doesn’t appeal any more than the bull side, or vice versa.  My one steadfast prejudice is against being wrong.

When I am long of stocks it is because my reading of conditions has made me bullish.  But you find many people, reputed to be intelligent, who are bullish because they have stocks.  I do not allow my possessions – or my prepossessions either – to do any thinking for me.  That is why I repeat that I never argue with the tape.

Obviously the thing to do was to be bullish in a bull market and bearish in a bear market.

… I came to learn that even when one is properly bearish at the very beginning of a bear market it is not well to begin selling in bulk until there is no danger of the engine back-firing.

Of course, if a man is both wise and lucky, he will not make the same mistake twice.  But he will make any one of ten thousand brothers or cousins of the original.  The Mistake family is so large that there is always one of them around when you want to see what you can do in the fool-play line.

Losing money is the least of my troubles.  A loss never troubles me after I take it.  I forget it overnight.  But being wrong – not taking the loss – that is what does the damage to the pocket book and to the soul.

“I can’t sleep” answered the nervous one.
“Why not?” asked the friend.
“I am carrying so much cotton that I can’t sleep thinking about.  It is wearing me out. What can I do?”
“Sell down to the sleeping point”, answered the friend.

He will risk half his fortune in the stock market with less reflection that he devotes to the selection of a medium-priced automobile.

It sounds very easy to say that all you have to do is to watch the tape, establish your resistance points and be ready to trade along the line of least resistance as soon as you have determined it.  But in actual practice a man has to guard against many things, and most of all against himself – that is, against human nature.

A speculator must concern himself with making money out of the market and not with insisting that the tape must agree with him.  Never argue with it or ask for reasons or explanations.

He should accumulate his line on the way up.  Let him buy one-fifth of his full line.  If that does not show him a profit he must not increase his holdings because he has obviously begun wrong; he is wrong temporarily and there is no profit in being wrong at any time.

Fear keeps you from making as much money as you ought to.

That was the only one case.  There isn’t a man on Wall Street who has not lost money trying to make the market pay for an automobile or a bracelet or a motor boat or a painting.

More than once in the past I had run up a shoe-string in to hundreds of thousands.  Sooner or later the market would offer me an opportunity.

The game does not change and neither does human nature.

After I paid off my debts in full I put a pretty fair amount in to annuities.  I made up my mind I wasn’t going to be strapped and uncomfortable and minus a stake ever again.

Among the hazards of speculation the happening of the unexpected – I might even say of the unexpectable – ranks high.

I started my buying operations in the winter of 1917.  I took quite a lot of coffee.  The market however, did nothing to speak of.  It continued inactive and as for the price, it did not go up as I had expected.  The outcome of it all was that I simply carried my line to no purpose for nine long months.

I trade on my own information and follow my own methods.

He was utterly fearless but never reckless.  He could, and did, turn on a twinkling if he found he was wrong.

At the same time I realise that the best of all tipsters, the most persuasive of all salesmen, is the tape.

The speculator’s deadly enemies are: Ignorance, greed, fear and hope.  All the statue books in the world and all the rule books on all the Exchanges of the earth cannot eliminate these from the human animal.

On Pat Hearne – He made money in stocks, and that made people ask him for advice.  He would never give any.  If they asked him point-blank for his opinion about the wisdom of their commitments he used a favourite race-track maxim of his: “You can’t tell till you bet.” He traded in our office.  He would  buy one hundred shares of some active stock and when, or if, it went up 1 percent, he would buy another hundred.  On another points advance, another hundred shares; and so on.  He used to say that he wasn’t playing the game to make money for others and therefore would put in a stop-loss order one point below the price of his last purchase.  When the price kept going up he simply moved up his stop with it.  On a 1 percent reaction he was stopped out.  He declared he did not see any sense in losing more than one point, whether it came out of his original margin or out of his paper profits.
“You know, a professional gambler is not looking for long shots, but for sure money.  Of course, long shots are fine when they come in.  In the stock market Pat wasn’t after tips or playing to catch twenty-points-a-week advances, but sure money in sufficient quantity to provide him with a good sense of living.  Of all the thousands of outsiders I have run across in Wall Street, Pat Hearne was the only one who saw in stock speculation merely a game of chance like faro or roulette, but nevertheless had the sense to stick to a relatively sound betting method.
“After Pat Hearne’s death one of our customers who had always traded with Pat and used his system made over a hundred thousand dollars in Luckawana.  Then he switched over to some other stock and because he had made a big stake he thought he need not stick to Pat’s way.  When a reaction came, instead of cutting his losses he let them run – as though they were profits.  Of course every cent went.  When he finally quit he owed us several thousand dollars.

And he was right.  I sometimes think that speculation must be an unnatural sort of business, because I find that the average speculator has arrayed against his own nature.  The weaknesses that all men are prone to are fatal to success in speculation – usually those very weaknesses that make him likable to his fellows or that he himself particularly guards against in those other ventures of his where they are not nearly so dangerous as when he is trading in commodities or stocks.

The public ought always to keep in mind the elementals of stock trading.  When a stock is going up no elaborate explanation is needed as to why it is going up.  It takes continuous buying to make a stock keep going up.  As long as it does so, with only small and natural reactions from time to time, it is a pretty safe proposition to trail with it.

But if after a long steady rise a stock turns and gradually begins to go down, with only occasionally small rallies, it is obvious that the line of least resistance has changed from upward to downward.  Such being the case why should anyone ask for explanations?  There are probably very good reasons why it should go down…

1. Perform a situation analysis. – Check for trends and conditions. Identify what is exactly giving rise to the need for a decision.

2. Determine the decision objective. – What are the why’s?  What do you hope to gain?

3. Quantify expected results. – If you make the decision, what new conditions will arise and ask if those are desirable for you. You must try to evaluate the quality of a decision with a quantified target.

4. Identify available information. – Garbage in, garbage out. The quality of your decision is as good as the quality of information going into that decision.

5. Identify other resources. - Which are available? Which can you generate more of if necessary? Where will you look and by when?

6. Establish decision requirements. – What are the conditions that must be met before you can make a decision?

7. Determine desirable features. – If decision requirements are the “musts” ; desirable features are the “wants.”

8. Rate desirable features. – Not all wants have the same level of importance.

9. Generate alternatives. – What are other available choices?

10. Test alternatives. – Measure each alternative against your list of requirements and reject those that don’t meet your requirements.

11. Evaluate alternatives. - Compare desirable features of the remaining alternatives and give each alternative a comparative rating on each feature.

12. Compare alternatives. – Generate a total score for each remaining alternative and compare. Multiply the rating earned by one alternative for each feature by the weight assigned to that feature in step 8. Like for a rating of 1 to 10, you assign 5 to a feature (like sturdiness, or even supervisory resposibilities) which you might have assigned a weight of 30% (5 x 0.30). Do this for each feature on each alternative. Then compare total scores for each alternative. The highest score becomes a tentative choice.

13. Test the tentative choice for consequences. – What will happen in the short, mid, and long term for this decision?

14. Make the final decision. – If it passes step 13, implement it. If not, proceed to the next highest scoring alternative.

Return to step 1 if you haven’t found a suitable choice, begin the whole thing again and make sure you don’t miss anything.

These exercises deliver results, given that one pays close attention to form.

1. Walking – No equipment necessary. Start at 5 to 10 minutes then increase it to 30 minutes per session. Increase your speed and level of incline as you go about challenging yourself.

2. Interval Training – It always challenges your body if you vary the intensity of your activity. Push the tempo for a minute then simmer down between 2 to 10 minutes.

3. Squats – Works on multiple muscle groups at the same time (gluts, quads, and hamstrings).

4. Lunges – Also works out multiple muscle groups like squats, plus it helps improve balance.

5. Push-ups – Strengthens the shoulders, chest. core muscles, and triceps.

6.  Abdominal crunches – Strengthens your core muscles.

7.  Bent-over Rows – Benefits the lower, mid, and upper back.

He has the following rules to guide him:

• Wisely choose your business partners.
• Never stand still – keep innovating, upgrading, inventing, expanding…
• “If you sleep with your help, you might need help.”
• Believe that you can manage through any crisis.
• Look for extra ways to turn the buck.
• Experiment and try new ideas.

Here’s a link to the original write-up in CNBC.

1. Produce – Fruits and vegetables especially blueberries and leafy greens like spinach. Berries are full of vitamin C and anti-oxidants, keeping your skin smooth while protecting your cells cancer, heart disease, and diabetes to Alzheimer’s, arthritis, and osteoporosis. Dark leafy greens. These veggies are prime sources of lutein and zeaxanthin, plant pigments that protect your eyes from the harmful effects of ultraviolet light and they are rich in vitamin K which helps reduce boneloss.

2. Protein – Muscle mass which is a key component in boosting your metabolism can be maintained by getting enough protein from skinless chicken and turkey breast, lean beef and pork, eggs, beans, dairy, and seafood. Calcium also cannot build bone without enough protein.

3. Omega-3-Rich Fish – If you don’t like fish, omega-3 can also be found in walnuts and flaxseed. They fight chronic inflammation while improving mood and attitude among healthy people.

4. Whole Grains – Found in whole wheat, oats, and brown rice, bread, cereal, and others made from them. They fight against diabetes, heart disease, stroke, colon cancer, high blood pressure, and gum disease due to the vitamins, minerals, plant chemicals, and fiber that work together and promote health.

5. Exercise – It maintains muscle mass, boosts metabolism, and keeps your heart and lungs strong. The recommendation? 30 minutes or more of moderate aerobic activity 5 days a week plus twice a week of strength training to maintain your muscle mass.

6. Red Wine and Other Drinks – Red wine has resveratrol, which is a potent antioxidant, inflammation damper, and artery protector. Limit yourself to one glass per day. Coffee fights type 2 diabetes, Parkinson’s disease, and heart disease. Tea can lower heart attacks, strengthen your immune system, protect tooth enamel, and help fight memory loss.

7. Nuts and Dark Chocolate – Suggested as “snack” items. Nuts have protein and keeps you full which helps you eat less later on. 20% of its fat and calories don’t absorbed by the body. Fi you’re craving for something sweet, try Dark Chocolate have anti-oxidants.

I have compiled below what I have read so far about how to choose mutual funds. These come from different sources and I have weeded out what I think do not apply to to the Philippine market. Compared to learning the stock market behavior, this topic is relatively easier to absorb. So read on…

1. Read up. Keep learning. Read my blogs or any material that can carry past what you’re learning here. Knowledge is power. And knowing is half the battle.

2. Settle on a suitable asset allocation. After you drew up your battle plan for investing (determined your risk tolerance, growth strategies, etc…), purchase your funds according to this strategy. It would come out pretty useless if you would just ignore this plan wouldn’t it?

3. Discover the many research tools that are readily at hand. Ok we have books, magazines, newspapers, the internet. Everything is there. Look for fund performance, rankings, etc…

4. Check on no-load. These so-called loads, only mean commissions. There is one no load mutual fund I know in the Philippines and that is the Prosperity Money Market Fund. Performance-wise though, I see no growth there. 3.88% on the 3 Yr. Investment Return makes almost no difference to a time-deposit.

5. Look for funds with low annual expenses. You really have to check this out. This could be eating up your profits. Please make sure your fund performs well enough to cover the expenses and outperform the index fund over a long period of time.

6. Look for fund managers who have been in place for at least 5 years. Managed funds are run by people not computers, and you have to know who these people are. When the top stock picker leaves, so does the talent that goes with him/her. Or make sure the team left is well-trained by these investment wizards. Team-managed funds are normally managed by a real shot caller. This person must be identified at all costs. Hehe. Stick with funds whose lead managers are specifically identified.

7. Look for superior prior performance. Previous good records aren’t predictive themselves. But this is an indication that the manager is good. Your quarry is always the manager not a particular fund.

8. Compare the fund with its peer group. The fund should outperform its peer group as well as a general market average.

9. Check for consistency of investment style. Style is defined by the kind of stocks or investments it invests in. You want them consistent. What they say in the prospectus should always be what they should do in the real world.

10. Consider the Fund’s Size. It’s size should be congruent with its investment goals. Managers sometimes announce that they’re going to close their funds. That’s no time to buy. It simply means the fund has attracted more new money than it can handle, which means performance might fall off.

11. Check the fund’s performance in down markets. Some funds drop further than the general market average, then spring back – growth funds. Others go down less but may not turn up fast – value funds. Are you daring? Conservative? Choose the funds that makes you happier.

12. Check the minimum investment. Here in the Philippines. Some start at Php 500. Others at Php 10,000. Choose your pick. Be practical. What can you realistically afford? Additional investments you want to purchase can then vary per fund.

That wraps it up for now.

Just a few more notes on diversification. This is for those who want to improve their portfolio.
Diversification is a good defense/protection strategy for those who aren’t as versed quite well with the market. And I suspect, that’s for most of us here. Not everybody is a seasoned stock broker. And even these professionals make some mistakes and lose a lot. If you don’t have enough money to throw away, don’t put all your eggs in one basket.

Diversification comes in at least the following 3 ways:

1. Diversify your risks. The following have varying degrees of risks. Generally the higher the risk, the higher the profit. That’s one of the basic laws of investing. The trick is to diversify on the different type of investments that you have.
- invest in equities (stocks), bonds, mutual funds, real estate, pension plans, time-deposits

2.  Diversify your currencies. If you invest in just one, you might gain in the share prices 9captial gains) but lose in the currency conversion rate. If you diversify, you offset your other investments’ losses.  Strong currency investments can offset weak currency investments. (like in the relationship between the Peso and the US Dollar).
- There is the Euro, the Dollar, the Peso, etc…

3. Diversify your companies. Each company has a different fund manager, hence different investment strategies. Their strategy could spell the difference between your success and your failure. If you’re not too familiar with the fund managers, I suggest you diversify on this as well.
- Philequity, MAA, Prudential Optima, Grepalife Assets, AyalaLand, Crown Asia, etc..

If you know the best approach, they say it is better to concentrate. I agree. But if you can’t predict the future, safeguard your portfolio. Don’t pretend to know what will happen. Play it safe. It’s always better than be sorry.

To profit from Forex trading here are the five key factors that affecting a currency’s value.

In order of importance, they are:

• Interest Rates
• Economic Growth
• Geo-Politics
• Trade and Capital Flows
• Merger and Acquisition Activity

If you can predict how each of these factors affect your currency trades, you have the foundation to make serious returns.

1. For interest rate here are some of the techniques:

- Buy currencies from countries with high-interest rates and finance these purchases with currency from countries with low-interest rates.

- As country’s interest rate rises, the value of the country’s currency also tends to rise. You profit from the increased value or capital appreciation.

2. Economic Growth.

The stronger the economy, the greater the possibility that the central bank will raise its interest rates to slow down inflation. And the higher a country’s interest rates, the bigger the likelihood that foreign investors will invest in a country’s financial markets. More foreign investors means a greater demand for the country’s currency. A greater demand results in an increase in a currency’s value. Simple law of supply and demand. This is usually represented by the GDP value.

3. Geo-politics.

Yup currencies represent countries. Any bad news on a country would pull down the currency it is carrying. And as a general rule of thumb, politics always beat economics since speculators always run first and ask questions later thus affecting the “demand” for the currency.

4. Trade and Capital Flow.

First classify a country if it is dependent on wither trade or capital flow. Some countries are more sensitive on one or the other.

Let’s differentiate the two first. Trade flow refers to how much income a country earns through trade. Capital flow refers to how much investment a country attracts from abroad. Then of course you look for policies affecting either the trade or capital flow.

5. Mergers and acquisitions.

Merger and acquisition activity occurs when a company from one economic region wants to make a transnational transaction and buy a corporation from another country.  Take note that a buyer has to convert it’s currency to the one he’s buying in another country. Of course this raises the “demand” for the currency.

In conclusion. Make sure you check for all these factors when making your investment decision. If there is a conflict, it very well depends on the strength of each opposing factor. And that’s the hard part.

That’s it pancit. Just some stuff I want to share…

According to Fast Money Trade School, you can make it easy by following this simple rule.

The percentage of fixed income in your portfolio should mirror your age. So if you’re 30% years old, it means that 30% of your portfolio should be in bonds and the rest in stocks.

What can you see here? From what I see it means that the younger you are, the more percentage you can invest in more aggressive investments like stocks.

Like if you’re 20 years old, you can put 80% in stocks. But if you’re 30%, you can put only 70% in stocks.

Of course, this is only a general rule.

Happy investing!