Trading Journal for Newbies!

Looking around for a simple, offline, trading journal? Try this. 

No promises to make you a better trader. But a good journalist perhaps!! 😁

Is the title banner too foreboding (with covid or someone else's name)? You can change that anytime via the Settings tab.

Get the program here.

Download the user's guide here.

Try, Improve, Share!!

UITF Tracker & Journal for Newbies

 If you are into UITF or Mutual Fund investing, perhaps you need a way to keep track of your money.

 Here's a simple Excel journal. No fancy dashboards, graphs, charts, etc.

 

 

Download the Excel file here.

A users guide is here.

Try, Improve, Share!

A Simple Toolset for Newbie Traders

Here's a worksheet with a variety of tools for stock traders. 

 

Download it here

For newbies, by a noob!  Try, improve, share!!

Hara and her SPAM v.2

Many investors, like Hal, swear by the peso cost averaging (PCA). But as the story of Honi shows, she earns more than Hal by using a modified version of PCA. This I call strategic peso averaging method  (SPAM©😆).

Hara, another UITF investor, earns more by tweaking the process a little more. She does topups on the uptrend, redeem at the peak, saves on the downtrend, and invests the redeemed amount plus the savings at the bottom of the market.

While using the same time frame and fund as Hal and Honi, her PSEI chart looks like this:

This is the result of SPAM v2:




Scoreboard update:

• PCA (Hal)=  5.82%
• SPAM (Honi) =  6.65%
• SPAM v2 (Hara) =  12.85%

Someone asked me why I don't like ETFs. Because it reminds me of the credit default options, and derivatives market which precipitated the 2008 global financial crisis. See here for example.

Anyway, as a bonus info just click on the FMETF tab on the above spreadsheet and see how much one can make on the same time frame used by Hal, Honi, and Hara.

Next up, we'll compare UITF and bluechips.

Strategic Peso Averaging Method

In my last post I shared the story of Hal, a strict practitioner of the peso cost averaging method (PCA). He has a UITF account, specifically the BPI Philippine Equity Index Fund (BPI PEIF).

Every 15th day of each month, when his salary arrives in his bank account, he transfers 1,000 pesos to his UITF account. If the 15th day happens to be on a weekend or a holiday, it will be credited to his UITF account on the next banking day.

He started on the 15th of January 2014 and redeemed only on January 30, 2018. For his efforts he made a profit equivalent to 5.82% per year. The average inflation in those four years was 2.12% (see here). Hal was ahead  of the inflation.

But is there a way that he could have earned more?

Let's hear the story of Honi. She is  a liberal practitioner of PCA. I call her method SPAM, short for strategic peso averaging method. Instead of adding every month to her UITF account, she only does so when the PSEI is on the uptrend. Her chosen fund is, ta-da, also the BPI PEIF.

When the index is on a downtrend she saves the monthly amount and invests the accumulated savings in the month around the bottom of the index. Then she does another round of monthly topups when the PSEI is on the way up. Wash, rinse, repeat until January 2018!!

Obviously, she has learned some rudimentary knowledge of the PSEI chart. This is what her line chart says:

No fancy moving averages there, nor candlestick patterns. But it served her well enough.

And this is the result of her investments:




Assumptions: Hal and Honi put in the initial required amount of 10,000 pesos to open their account.

Scoreboard, so far:

PCA =  5.82%
SPAM = 6.38%  6.65% (updated Nov. 18, 2018)

Next week we will look into the investment journey of  Hara where she nets 10%+ during the same time frame.

She is using SPAM v2.

Peso Cost Averaging

Pan De Vera, a fellow  member of UITF FB group, has started blogging which inspired me to update this blog,

His latest post (see here) is about his thoughts on peso cost averaging (PCA) as related to investing in UITFs.

There is much discussion, pros and cons, in our FB group. And sometimes it can get acrimonious. But there is not enough space on FB to really explain your side of the issue.

So here's my take on the subject. This is the story of Hal.

Hal, in the evening of December 31, 2013, decided that as part of his New Year resolution he will start saving 1,000 pesos per month. He had already built up an emergency fund. This time it will be for investment. He was looking forward to starting his own family in 5 years.

He heard about the Unit Investment Trust Fund (UITF) from a teller of BPI. His employer credits his salary every 15th and 30th of the month to this bank.

Thankfully, the teller did not induce him to get a VUL. 😉 So UITF it was.

He chose the BPI Philippine Equity Index  Fund and opted for a Regular Subscription Plan (RSP). The bank would credit his fund account every 15th of the month; or the next banking day, if the 15th is a weekend or a holiday.

On New Year's eve of 2017, he thought that it was a fine time to settle down by February 2018.

So he redeemed on January 29, 2018. Here's how much he got.


"What if I followed the MACD buy signals?" he thought.

Here's the MACD for the period courtesy of Investagrams.

Click on the MACDBuy  tab on the worksheet above to find out what Hal learned.

What if Hal followed the buy and sell signals of the MACD?  Well, he would not sell, either to take profit or to cut losses,  because he is a straight PCA guy like many in our FB group.💓

But it was good that he did not buy and sell. He would have lost some of his capital. I can show here the worksheet but I'd rather that you do your own backtesting, a favorite mantra of the ZFT crowd,  of the data.

Hal would have done better if he used what I call the Strategic Peso Averaging Method (SPAM). That will be a subject of my next post.

BTW, try changing the monthly amount on the straight PCA sheet.

Taking advantage of the correction

No posts for weeks now. Been busy taking advantage of the "correction" in the market

After I fully redeemed one of my mutual fund investments on January 16, 2018, I made a "discovery" that I should not have redeemed it fully.

Instead, what I should have done was to set a certain return over and above what I am getting from my 5-year time deposit placement which is 5.5% per annum at Sun Savings Bank. Redeem partially  and leave the rest to grow.

Anyway, at redemption I got a return of 12% per year. Not bad. 

But it should have been better if I just redeemed enough shares that would amount to the gain on investment and leave the original capital intact.

For instance, my cost of investment is, say P500K. After a year or so, I have unrealized gain of P100K. That's already a 20% return. I will redeem the equivalent number of shares for P100K. The remaining shares would still leave the original capital intact. Then I wait for another year or so when the NAVPS moves above my preset goal of 5.5%.

So what kept me busy these past weeks after PSEi hit 9000+ and plunged was to return my original capital to my mutual fund by way of a modified cost averaging method. My top ups were in different amounts.

The realized gain is already long gone. 😊😊