Time to Buy Stock Mutual Fund

There are a lot of good news that favors all those who are interested to buy stock mutual funds. For the past 6 months, here are the reasons why we are looking North:

1. Gains in electricity sales and employment
2. Rebound in exports
3. Strength on construction spending.
4. Downward trend in crude oil prices.
5. Limited pressure on inflation.
6. OFW remittance still growing.
7. Cash positions of banks and investors remaining very high.
8. Stable fiscal situation.
9. Peso continue to appreciate.
10. Pag-ibig Fund is reviving its Biglang Bahay funds by selling zero-coupon bonds.
11. Aboitz Power Corp. (AP) is eyeing P5 B retail corporate bonds.
12. Ayala Land, Inc. (ALI) is also proceeding to sell its third tranche of home-starter bonds.
13. Ayala Corp. (AC) plans to issue P10 B worth of 7-year bonds, with a put opton on the 5th year.

We have not yet reach the peak of the recovery hence there are lot of potential to earn.
Good luck!.

Note: this is personal opinion of the writer and any investment you made will be at your own risk.

Rank 12 and counting......

Five years from now, the population of the Philippines will hit more than 100 million.According to the latest CIA report we are the 12th most populous country.


RANK COUNTRY POPULATION DATE OF INFORMATION
1 China 1,338,612,968 July 2010 est.
2 India 1,156,897,766 July 2010 est.
3 United States 307,212,123 July 2010 est.
4 Indonesia 240,271,522 July 2010 est.
5 Brazil 198,739,269 July 2010 est.
6 Pakistan 174,578,558 July 2010 est.
7 Bangladesh 156,050,883 July 2010 est.
8 Nigeria 149,229,090 July 2010 est.
9 Russia 140,041,247 July 2010 est.
10 Japan 127,078,679 July 2010 est.
11 Mexico 111,211,789 July 2010 est.
12 Philippines 97,976,603 July 2010 est.
13 Vietnam 88,576,758 July 2010 est.
Source: https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2119rank.html)

Many of our young graduates will fight for limited jobs and they need skills because the workplace of tomorrow will be complex and highly-demanding.

To succeed, the graduates of 2010 and beyond should have solid foundation and should possess the following skills:

1. Having the ability to communicate, i.e., read, write, speak and
listen. Very basic but very necessary skills.
2. Ability to reason, think creatively, make decisions,and solve problems.
3. Ability to be responsible,sociable and to take responsibility.
4. Ability to use talent, time , money and materials wisely.
5. Ability to work in teams and to work well with people of different backgrounds.
6. Ability to use information without being overwhelmed. Skills in computer is
necessary.
7. Ability to create, revise and improve the system.
8. Ability to adapt to the latest technology.

The jobs of tomorrow belong to those who possess the necessary skills.

We are all middle class now?

This year, the Asian Development Bank classified the new Filipino middle class as the following:
1. The lower middle class, numbering 27.43Million people, who consume P86–P172 per person per day.
2. The 17.11 million “middle-middle” class—consumes at P172–P430.
3. The 3.31 million upper-middle class consumes P430–P860 per day.

The ADB key indicators for the Asia and the Pacific also indicate the following profile of the Asian middle class:
A. They have preference for fewer children.
B. They are regionally concentrated where Manila got 22% of the share.
C. They are better educated.
D. They are more likely to invest in the schooling of their children.
E. They spend a larger share of their budget on health and education.
F. They run businesses, usualy small, undercapitalized, have low resource commitments, and are often unprofitable.
G. They are much more likely to work in government and corporations in particular.
H. They have greater support for market competition and perceiving significant
prospects for upward mobility.
I. They create incentives for entrepreneurship and increased productivity through hard work.
J. They have the greatest participation in political activities.

SOUL SEARCHING PROFESSOR

The semester is ending and the 220 students who enrolled in my class will face new subjects and new professors next semester.

The grief of a teacher is when he felt he contributed nothing to the advancement of knowledge and to see his students to be potential liabilities of our society. When this is felt and seen the agony is unexplainable.

The joy however of hearing and seeing my previous students working in banks, corporations or setting up their own businesses gave me enough fulfillment that I will bring up to my last breath.

The grief and the joy are intertwined and to prevent the former to rule my world, I gave myself the following rubrics to ask myself at the end of every semester if I am effective:

1. Did I develop the skills needed by my students in relation to the subject I taught?
2. Did I contributed in the development of their character particularly in inculcating to
them that they should give preferential treatment to the poor?
3. Did I encourage them to explore the future career that they will face?

If I am satisfied with the answers these fuel me to go on despite the cruelty of this world.

MBA FOR EVERYONE

My students are asking what is the best Philippine MBA school ?. I always said that the school that will force you to think creatively and make that idea a reality is the best one. But not everyone is blessed with money to spend close to P300,000 to obtain an MBA, nor the opportunity because of distance, work and family problems.

Those who are facing the above constraints, take heart because for only an investment of P10,000 or less you can be like a newly minted MBA graduate.

How? By borrowing, renting or buying the 20 business books written by the best minds of our lifetime. I am recommending these 20 books because it covers economics, management, sales and marketing, small business, investing, personal finance and careers. Enough for a person to think like a newly minted MBA graduate.

The books are:

1. Good to Great by Jim Collins
2. Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni
3. Now, discover your strengths by Marcus Buckingham
4. Who Moved my cheese? Spencer Johnson
5. Freakonomics by Stephen Levitt
6. The Total Money Makeover by David Ramsey
7. The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell
8. Rich dad, Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki
9. Gettings Things Done by David Allen
10. Good to Great and the Social Sectors by Jim Collins
11. The Intelligent Investor by Benjamin Graham
12. The 7- Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey
13. A Guide to project Management Body of Knowledge by the Project management
Institute.
14. Getting to Yes by Roger Fisher.
15. Blink by Malcolm Gladwell
16. Strengthsfinder 2.0 by Tom Rath
17. The money book for the young, Fabulous and broke by Suze Orman
18. Leadership and Self Deception by the Arbinger Institute
19. The Goal by Elihayu M. Goldratt
20. What got you here won’t get you there by Marshall Goldsmith

Read , employ and live it out.

If you are still not satisfied after reading the 20 books, go ahead and enroll in an MBA program. They will add the mind numbing Accounting, the money laden operations & logistics and the brainwashing business ethics.

The advantage of the classroom setting MBA programs is that you can physically collaborate with your best professors who will train you to questions idea from every angle. They will train you to be Primus Inter Pares.

Repression on tertiary private school

The repression on tertiary private schools is very evident in the Philippine setting. The government demands quality faculty (MS,MA,MBA), library, laboratories, and facilities but subsidies they did not provide. When private schools raised their tuition fees, the government always imposed the idea that it should not be above inflation rate.

If you are working in a private school, you will be frustrated when the government demands,never give subsidies and restrained you to raise tuition fees. Then you will read from the newspapers that the same demands are also given to state colleges/universities but the difference is the government shoulder all the costs.

Where's the equity then?.

I am subsidizing the tuition fee of a student studying in a state college through the monthly income tax I paid but I am not receiving any subsidy for my daughter studying in private school.

Where's the equity then?.

Teamwork?

In every organization it is always the desire of the people to work in teams to accomplish the assigned tasks faster. It is nature to a person to mingle because human by nature need to connect to one another.

Why is it then that teamwork is difficult to attain?. Is it because we came from different upbringings that it is inevitable that there will be clash of personalities and beliefs?.

But we are the only species capable of building friendship and this human value is the root of an effective teamwork.

Friendship with sincere attention and devoid of deceit.
Friendship with sincere affirmation and devoid of hypocrisy.
Friendship with sincere appreciation and devoid of manipulation.

Need teamwork?. Cultivate Sincere friendship first.