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Investment Management

Life and Lemons

Bonus Question

Each four-week chunk of time at school always feels like something from a melodramatic dialogue, i.e. “it is all ending before it has even begun.” And like the handful of my favorite subjects, this whirlwind of a course left an aftermath of things learned and unlearned, and more things to do to make the most of the collection of wisdom gained from that invaluable period.

Hence, below is my post-INVEMAN to-do list. It is like a list of New Year’s resolutions only better, since I am actually motivated to see these through.

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Life and Lemons

Investment 101

An article this week from our Trust Group’s regular newsletter illustrated that if someone invested Php10,000 annually from age 20 at an assumed rate of 14% per annum (which you will only get if you dangle out a limb or two placing your funds in stock/equity funds), he will have roughly Php15.00M by the time he is set to retire at age 60. Even with the benign 3-5% inflation added to the equation, that is still not a bad deal.

The impressionistic fellow that I am, I took out my calculator and started digging my bank accounts for funds I can spare and forget for the next 35 years or so. In the midst of prep research though, I come across this link http://ph.she.yahoo.com/photos/the-10-commandments-of-investing-1347530914-slideshow/2-thou-shalt-put-thy-financial-house-in-order-photo-1347521061.html, and stop my computations by the second slide.

Drat. Credit card, you will be the death of me lest I tame you first. I start investing by year end, I mean it.

Life and Lemons

Confused with Mr Ben

I am currently forced by an academic authority to read the front page and business news, and while I love reading per se (in any form, from menu place mats to ingredient lists to subtitles and literature), the exercise only reminded me why I skip those sections of the paper every time — they scare the bejays out of me.

One of the things that confound me at the moment is the recently announced Quantitative Easing or QE3 by the US Federal Reserve, headed by Ben Bernanke. Basically, the country’s monetary policy authority will be injecting funds into the economy by buying $40 billion in mortgage bonds per month seemingly indefinitely, in efforts to boost employment. When asked how this policy will benefit the people, this is Mr Bernanke’s response:

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