InvestaDaily

Christmas bonus stories: 

“Tara kain!”

“Uy, sale sa department store!”

“Samgyup tayo mga besh!” 

The next day: “teka nasaan na pera ko?” Usually pag nagkakaroon tayo ng additional income eto yung mga naririnig natin.

Pero tama nga ba na dapat gamitin ang buong CHRISTMAS BONUS pang good time? Don’t get us wrong. It’s very important to also have a portion of your income spent on enjoying life. All of us work extremely hard to not only provide for our families but to also live a quality lifestyle. However, how much spending is TOO MUCH?

If you’ve been watching our Personal Finance Series here on Investagrams, you may recall our first episode where we tackled the state of the Philippines in regard to financial literacy. To cut it short, we’re still a long way from where we need to be as a nation. Let’s talk about a topic that often gets overlooked: HANDLING YOUR 13TH MONTH PAY.

You may be wondering, “Why focus on the Christmas bonus?” You’re right, there are so many other aspects we can focus on. We can talk about saving tips, budgeting strategies, and much more. However, we’re zeroing in on how to handle your Christmas bonus because it’s that time of the year again. While it’s just a bonus, it is still money that you can make the most out of. Rather than using it all on luxuries, let’’s tackle how we can be smart about it; while still enjoying the bonus for the holidays!

HOW TO HANDLE YOUR CHRISTMAS BONUS

1. PAY BACK ANY LOANS OR DEBTS

This may not be applicable to all. But, if you owe some money then it may be best to hold back on your samgyupsal cravings for a while. Take the Christmas bonus as an opportunity to pay off debts and lighten the burden on your shoulders. On a side note, try your best to avoid borrowing money from other people especially if it’s only to satisfy your wants. Eating out is great, but definitely better when you don’t have any debt worries after!

2. GIVE BACK TO THE COMMUNITY

Christmas time has always been known as the season of giving. Donating to charities or simply doing a kind deed for someone in need can go a long way. Of course, you don’t have to give your entire bonus away. Even small amounts can go a long way to impact the life of someone less fortunate. It’s also just something nice to do, especially around this time of the year. Humans are social beings, so helping out a fellow human should come naturally.

3. ADD IT TO YOUR EMERGENCY FUND

If you don’t have one yet, then now is the best time to start! Conventional wisdom says that you should have an emergency fund greater or equal to at the very least six months worth of salary. Not everyone can set aside cash for an emergency fund since we all have different circumstances. However, setting aside just half of your Christmas bonus can be a great start! Always remember, we will never know when a black swan event may happen. Better to be prepared than face the consequences.

4. INSURANCE. INSURANCE. INSURANCE

Speaking of black swan events, we will never know what may happen to us or any of our loved ones at any moment. As we’ve said, it’s best to always be prepared. You can use your Christmas bonus to begin investing in insurance. We won’t go deep into the different types since that would take up a whole article of its own. But, as early as now you can start doing your own research on them. There are many kinds and there should be at least one that fits your current situation.

5. MAKE YOUR MONEY WORK FOR YOU

Rather than spending your Christmas bonus on “luho,” why not invest it? It can be a great way to jump-start your investing journey! Anyone can learn how to invest, all you need is effort and dedication. To help everyone get started, we’ve released some guides to help you understand the basics. Of course, you can go over our vast resources to find information on fundamental analysis, technical analysis, and many more!

6. INVEST IN YOURSELF

One of the best investments you can make is an investment in yourselft. No matter what you do in life, there’s always a way for you to improve. May it be in the form of training videos, seminars, or books, investing in yourself is always a great idea. If you’re a trader, one of the ways you can invest in yourself is getting the PRIME ADVANTAGE. If you want to take your trading to the next level, attain your most powerful trading partner in the form of the InvestaPrime+. Curious about how it works? Check this out: 

CONCLUSION

Again, it’s okay to use your Christmas bonus on stuff you enjoy. However, it’s not okay to splurge it all and then come back to your worries once the new year starts. We’re just pointing out that you shouldn’t spend ALL OF IT on impulse splurges. The importance of using your Christmas bonus wisely is that it forms DISCIPLINE.

If you can apply the same discipline in your day-to-day road to financial freedom, ‘edi solid diba? Always remember, it’s not just about how much you MAKE, it’s also about how much you SPEND.

Spend wisely, ka-Investa!

---

As all of you know by now, our vision here in Investagrams is to be the catalyst that increases the investing population here in the Philippines to 10,000,000 Filipinos. In this article, we will be giving a few signs for you to check to identify if STOCK TRADING is for you. This is only focused for those who are looking to actively trade the stock market, this doesn’t include other financial markets like currencies, commodities, cryptocurrencies, and the like. Also, let us tell you that trading is not for everyone, but long term INVESTING is. This article will simply focus on five important signs to contemplate upon based on your own personal circumstances to know if trading the stock market is for you over than just simply being a long term investor.

Here are the five signs to know if the stock trading is for you:

1. YOU HAVE AN EMERGENCY FUND

It’s very important that you already have a good amount of savings, have already set up an emergency fund, and preferably already have insurance before you venture out into active trading. This is especially true for those who are already supporting a family. Trading the stock market involves a lot of risks, and losing money is simply a natural consequence of trading. Losses are unavoidable in the stock market, so placing all your money into your trading account knowing that you will also be using those funds to pay for your child’s tuition and the electricity bill is probably not the best idea.

If you’re still in your teen years or early 20s, then you won’t necessarily need to have all the items we mentioned above. Why? It’s because you have TIME. You have the time to work to make up the losses you incur in the market (if ever it comes to that point) and you may also not have the responsibility of providing for your own family yet. However, it’s still important to at the very least have some savings set aside.

You also have to be financially literate in the context of having the DISCIPLINE to follow your budget. How is that related to trading? When you start trading the stock market, you will need to create trading plans and also practice strict self-discipline. Anything less than that may lead to financial ruin, that’s why having the ability to follow a simple budget is very important.

2. YOU HAVE TO BE COMFORTABLE WITH TAKING RISKS

Every buy transaction you make in the stock market, whether it’s in the context of short term trading or long term investing, will always have a certain amount of risk involved. However, there’s much more risk involved in trading. When you invest in the long run, you would (ideally) take some time to research a specific company to see if it’s worth the investment and stick with it for a long period of time. In trading, you could hold a position as short as just a few seconds. When you’re trading you basically make more buy transactions which means you’re taking in risk much more.

But don’t forget, you’re taking these risks in the search of a much bigger reward. Conventional wisdom says that in order to reap a big reward you have to risk a big amount; high risk = high reward. Mark Minervini personally disagrees with this statement, stating that there’s a way to reap the high reward with only little risk involved if you buy stocks at low-risk entry points. Needless to say, there will always be risks involved. This is why you have to be comfortable with taking risks if you want to venture out to trading.

3. YOU HAVE ENOUGH TIME TO CHECK THE MARKET

When you’re a long term investor, since you’re looking at a longer-term timeframe, it’s okay to only check your holdings once a week whenever you’re available. However, if you want to trade the stock market it’s highly advisable to check the market at the very least once per day. Wanting to trade the stock market doesn’t mean you have to stare at your screens from 9:30am to 3:30pm, but it does mean that you will need to find time to check the market. If you’re unable to check the market in the morning, you can simply adopt and END-OF-DAY approach and only check the market between 3:00pm to 3:25pm, right before the market closes. If you really can’t make the time to check the market before it closes, then maybe long term investing would be a much better (and safer) option.

The reason why you need to check the market at least once a day is so you wouldn’t miss out on potential big winners and so you won’t hold on to losing stocks. You never know, that one day you couldn’t check the market might be the day a stock goes up 50% in one day or one of your positions drops -30% in one day. If you want to be alerted whenever your entry price, cutloss, or target profit is hit, you can always subscribe to the INVESTAPRIME in order to gain access to the InvestaWatcher so you can receive the real-time price and news alerts via in-app notifications and SMS.

Check out this article to learn more about applying and End-Of-Day approach: Which Trading Approach is Better: End-of-Day or Intraday?

4. YOU’RE HUNGRY FOR KNOWLEDGE

Being a profitable trader, let alone a market wizard, is not something you will accomplish by watching a few YouTube videos and reading a couple of articles online. When you venture into trading the stock market, you will need to understand that you are ALWAYS a student of the market. The stock market always changes, so you will need to learn how to adapt in order to survive. Also, being a consistently successful trader is a process of perpetual learning; meaning you will need to continuously learn more and more about trading.

One of the major downfalls that cause many traders around the world to blow up their account is when they think they already know all there is to know about trading. Once you believe you already know everything, then there’s no area where you can improve on. If you don’t improve, your performance will remain stagnant. Due to that, many traders get frustrated and start going all-in on their positions in the hopes of achieving stellar performance just to eventually wipe out.

5. YOU’RE DEEPLY PASSIONATE ABOUT TRADING

This is the most important factor of them all, PASSION. We all go into the stock market seeking a way to achieve financial freedom; something we all aim to achieve. You have to remember: IF YOU WANT THE THINGS YOU’VE NEVER HAD, YOU HAVE TO DO THE THINGS YOU’VE NEVER DONE. Simply put, you have to work extremely hard to be great at your craft. Sure, you can go to half-baked, but don’t expect to achieve stellar results. If you don’t give your all in any craft, you won’t achieve it at the highest level.

It’s the same with trading; the only way to achieve triple-digit returns is to put in insurmountable effort to attain that goal. The only way a person would be willing to work extremely hard for something is only if she sees it as her passion. Ask yourself, would you put in so many hours each week working on something you hate? Probably not. Also, if you’re not deeply passionate about trading you might quit after a few rough times. You may miss out on an opportunity to achieve financial freedom only because you couldn’t go through the short term setbacks.

To conclude this article, to those who are still contemplating whether or not they should take the leap and begin trading the stock market, try to take into consideration the five points we enumerated above. However, these are all written guidelines, the best way to know if something is for you is to experience it yourself. If you want to experience what trading the stock market is like first-hand, then you can just simply use our virtual trading platform here in Investagrams so in this way you can experience trading without actually risking real money. Good luck!

---

During the early days, people focused on fundamental factors to make investment decisions. People wanted to see increasing earnings, sales growth, surplus profit margins, and the like. However, there were a few who realized that relying solely on fundamentals was not enough to have superior trading performance. Very few traders used Technical Analysis back in the day, the consensus thought people who make their investment decisions based on the price alone were in some sort of cult.

However, over time, more and more people began to use Technical Analysis as a means to pick and choose their investments. Soon enough, traders all over the world began focusing on price over fundamental factors. Although, there was one more factor that only in the previous three decades has been studied thoroughly; mental analysis, or what we all know as Trading Psychology.

Let us give you an example of a trader who likes knowledge in Trading Psychology. Imagine a newbie trader who’s been having a string of losing trades for the first time. The right way to handle this situation is to scale back and trade smaller as you improve your win rate. However, our newbie trader is angry at the market and decides to increase his size threefold to revenge trade his capital back. You all know what happens next, he blows up his account.

That’s what happens when we deviate from our trading plans and rules and allow our emotions to get the best of us. There are four types of emotions that have blown up countless of trading accounts since the inception of the financial markets, those emotions are: GREED, FEAR, HOPE, and REGRET.

How do you master the psychology of trading?

We’re all unique from one another, so the key to mastering your psychology in trading is to find out your own personal strengths and weaknesses.

Let’s take a look at the Four (4) deadliest emotions in trading. We’ll discuss in a separate article in more detail these four emotions, but for now we’ll enumerate them for you:

Greed

This kicks in when you gain a significant amount of profits in a position. Greed is when you tell yourself that you will not follow your exit plan as the trade exceeds your set target price and you believe that your stock will go “to the moon”.

Fear

There are four types of Fear:

• • Fear of being wrong
  • Fear of losing money
  • Fear of missing out
  • Fear of leaving money on the table

Regret

When a loss or a missed opportunity happens that results to a feeling of disappointment and sadness, a feeling of regret occurs.

Hope

As human beings, it’s in our nature to hope when things get rough. However, hoping for a stock to recover after going below your stops has been and always will be one of the main reasons traders lose a majority of their capital.

Here are some basic points you should consider to improve your Trading Psychology:

Embrace uncertainty

There’s only one thing that’s certain in the markets: uncertainty. You have the engrain in your mind that there’s no sure-win investment. Everything that happens in the market is due to probabilities. We can’t control how the market moves, there are countless factors that are not under our control. That’s why it’s important to embrace uncertainty and focus only on the things we can control. So what are your options? If you want to be guided and get an advanced strategy in your trading, you may check out  InvestaPrime and see how our features help you to make efficient smarter decisions.

Visualize your execution process

One of the practices that will benefit you as a trader is mental preparation. If you ever feel the difficulty in pulling the trigger on an opportunity or cutting your losses on a losing position, it’s due to the fact that you are not mentally prepared for the execution. Before the market opens, visualize yourself executing on your trading plans. If you do this consistently, you’ll find it easier to execute during market hours.

Treat losses as the cost of doing business

Losing money in the market can really affect your psyche. One moment a stock goes accordingly to your initial bias only to reverse and hit your stops. That hurts. But only in the beginning. You need to understand that losses are the natural consequence of trading. Even the best hedge fund managers around the world are wrong on their trading decisions 50% of the time. Treat your trading losses as if they’re expenses in your business.

Try to virtual trade

Paper trading is a good way to get a grasp of the market, especially if you’re still starting out. Most traders make the most costly mistakes in the beginning of their journeys, so it’s best you make and learn from those mistakes while trading virtually. You can always use our VTrade app to trade the Stock Market risk-free (Click here for iOS or here for Android mobile phones).

Conclusion

Mastering your trading psychology will help you seamlessly enter and exit trades without certain attachments and emotions. You will be able to execute relentlessly without hesitation or reservation on your trading plan in order to take advantage of the countless opportunities in the markets. Without the right mindset coming into the trading day, you will not be able to perform at the highest level consistently.

The topic of Trading Psychology is very broad, so it’s entire scope can’t be discussed in one or two articles. However, the basic points we’ve mentioned above are a good start to master the psychology of trading. If you want to read more about this, we would recommend the books of Mark Douglas: The Disciplined Trader and Trading in the Zone.

For those are looking for an in-depth topics on Trading Psychology, we highly recommend you to join the upcoming Trading Cup 2019 competition whereby our CEO, JC Bisnar a.k.a. Imbang Klase will provide an mentoring sessions about this via Exclusive Webinars available only for participants. Join here: http://invs.st/TradingCup2019

---

Welcome to the Trading Cup 2019 Competition!

To be considered as an official participant, you must be able to go through the registration process including payment and ID verification as mentioned in this article.

After completion of the above requirements, here are some information that you may need to know once you officially joined the Trading Cup:

Step 1: Premium InvestaGroups

Once you have paid for your competition pass and have been verified by our team, you will automatically be added to a premium InvestaGroup.

For Prime and Regular Passes: Trading Cup Prime and Regular

For Student Passes: Trading Cup Students

You will receive the learning modules and webinar updates, news, tasks and many others via accessing the TOPICS tabs. (Regular and Prime InvestaGroup is a separate link from the Student InvestaGroup), and you may also interact with fellow participants along with our mentors.

Trading Cup InvestaGroups | TOPICS TAB

FREE LEARNING MODULES via InvestaLearn

Step 2: Webinars | Mentorship Sessions

We don’t want this year’s competition to only be for high level traders looking to be in a competitive environment. We also want this year’s Trading Cup to be an avenue to learn; especially those who are in the early stages of their investing journey.

Here’s everything you need to know about our mentorship sessions:

The mentorship sessions will be done through a series of webinars via InvestaLearn where our in-house traders here in Investagrams along with invited Stock Trading Champions and Multi-Million Fund Managers will help you guys take your trading to the next level.

Once your payment has been verified by our team, you will automatically gain access to the 400 page learning modules along with the exclusive webinar videos. Just go to InvestaLearn and click MY CLASSES to find them.

ACCESS InvestaLearn

Proceed to MY CLASSES

Webinars | Topics

The following are the topics that will be taught to Regular and Prime pass holders:

• Stock Market 101
• Understanding the Dynamics of Price Movement and Human Behavior
• Having a Risk-First Mentality
• How to Use Trading Tools to Your Advantage
• Inside the Minds of Stock Trading Champions and Multi-Million Fund Managers

The following are the topics that will be taught to Student pass holders:

• Stock Market 101
• Basic Technical Analysis
• Being a Student Trader
• Special Learning Sessions with Former Student Traders

Webinars | Release Dates

There will be a webinar released every Sunday starting Sunday, August 25, 2019.

BONUS: Exclusive Q & A Sessions with Investa Mentors

There will be an exclusive Q&A Sessions with your Investa Mentors (Jc Bisnar, Airwyn Tin, Bearyoholic, and TomaTrader) via InvestaGroups every Sunday from 9:00pm to 10:00pm.

All Trading Cup participants will be free to ask anything about the topics and lectures covered in the FREE 400 Page Learning Modules covering Technical Analysis, Fundamental Analysis, Risk Management, and Trading Psychology.

Only questions that were commented on the pinned post under “Q and A Sessions” tab in the premium InvestaGroup will be answered.

Questions from participants will be answered starting 9:00pm and ends at 10:00pm every Sunday starting August 25, 2019.

See sample conversation during the first Q&A Session last August 25:

---