Becoming an Investor – The Journey Began in July 2018

Few Months ago, my wife and I participated to a Financial Games called Praxis.

The purpose was to learn the really basic of the working of the financial market and its impact on our life. I really liked it. Which made me decide to open a brokerage account as fast as possible, and I began all the paperwork.

 

Yet, life as it that my mom became pretty ill and in the Intensive Care in a hospital in Brussels, Belgium. The country I come from. Living in the Philippines, I decided to go back to Belgium to see her. Something in me push me to go, a feeling that if I did not go, I will never see her again. It was clearly a good idea since she died two weeks after I arrived in Brussels. At least we were still able to discuss and have some fun few more days before that.

 

Still with some heavy feelings I flew back to the Philippines and resume my account opening with the brokerage Company. It was just a first step, so I only made a deposit of 4000 PHP (Filipino Pesos) – at the time around $100.

I had so much to learn in investment. What kind? How to do it? The pro and cons, etc.

 

After a free lecture from the brokerage Company, I was attracted to one specific stock which was, and still is at this writing, undervalued and unloved: East West Banking Corporation. Now there is an East West Banking Company in the USA, but I’m speaking about the one in the Philippines which are not belonging to the same Group.

At the time of the lecture the share was at 14.90 PHP (all the amount unless indicated are in Pesos)

 

I have to mention that, prior to even playing the Praxis game mentioned above, I’ve been listening to an excellent podcast titled “Invested: The Rule #1 Podcast” led by Phil and Danielle Town.

In that podcast they explain, in the easiest way possible, the way Warren Buffet and Charlie Munger are investing, and what led to their huge wealth. That’s where I learned, fundamentally, about “Value Investing”, and more specifically the way Warren Buffet is applying it.

 

So, the lecture and the podcast guided me and push me on a new learning path for me: Investing the right way. Now, I do think that Value Investing is clearly the way to go for me. From then on, I decided to apply the steps I learned from the Podcast.

Here I am reading the Annual Report of East West since their introduction in the public market in 2012, looking at the Financial Statement trying to get what I’m seeing.

That bank is a young bank competing against three big banks, namely Banco de Oro, Bank of the Philippines Islands, and MetroBank. Yet, they are really developing aggressively. I decide to keep an constant eye on it and make it test and study subjects for my Investing learning practice.\

 

I don’t have a clue about the details of the Journey ahead, but at 48 I’m opening to learn a new topic.

See you in the next post.