Tag Archives: Elections

Elections, Philippine Style

Dawning of a New Day

Last night, I did not know what to expect.

My mind was filled with doomsday scenarios.  After all, it is election time in present day Philippines.  It is the first automated voting in the country, which was precipitated by calls for manual counting – the PCOS (precinct count optical scan) machines from Smartmatic were conking out, the mock elections (the rehearsals) did not go as expected, the practice votes were not counted accurately – and then there was the usual election fare – mud slinging, vote buying, violence.

The election bug bit long and it bit hard, raising the temperature of the country to fever pitch.

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Mutual Funds: Magic of Larger Numbers

 

Hop In

I think I first heard about Mutual Funds from Bo Sanchez.  He likens it to a vehicle that almost anyone, with some funds to invest, can jump into, and that it should be a staple in the portfolio of any smart investor.

I was not entirely convinced (I did not really understand).

To further dispel the mystery of this so-called staple – Mutual Funds – I did some further reading and some interviews.  It is simpler than I thought.

Mutual Funds, turns out, is an investment vehicle where people can pool their resources to take advantage of the magic of larger numbers, that is, because a lot of people invest into “the fund”, they have a large number, and thus, the mutual fund manager – a professional who will manage the investment – can get better rates of return for them.  The mutual fund manager trades the “pooled” money on a regular basis and the net proceeds or losses are then typically distributed to the investors annually.  As my friend Salve Duplito said in one of her articles in MoneySmarts, with as little as USD$100, the regular John or Juans can get their feet wet in an instantly diversified portfolio of stocks, bonds, or both.

A sort of safe haven for the cautious investor.

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