ICI Argent–a Hong Kong based environmental technology oriented private equity firm–has been selected to represent Los Angeles, California based investment banking firm International Energy Capital Corporation for large scale project financing in the Philippines.
“U.S. standards, U.S. investors. That’s how we roll. If you’re a project manager you may be 60-90 days away from having your project fully funded on very competitive terms,” says group representative Paris Murray. Read the rest of this entry »
ICI Argent LLC, South East Asia’s first environmental technology focused venture capital firm, is scouting for extraordinary entrepreneurial talent in the Philippines and nearby countries.
“What are we looking for?” cites group representative Paris Murray. “In a nutshell: ground breaking, game-changing, and economically compelling technologies and business ideas which are socially responsible, improve the quality of life, and mitigate the adverse effects of climate change.” Read the rest of this entry »
Vanguard Group Inc., the largest U.S. provider of stock and bond funds, is deciding whether to keep Axa Rosenberg Group as manager for about $1.5 billion of its assets, after that firm said a “coding error” disrupted its quantitative investment process.
“We’re taking a very hard look at that relationship, but we’re still in fact-finding mode,” Rebecca Katz, a spokeswoman for Valley Forge, Pennsylvania-based Vanguard, said in a telephone interview. Read the rest of this entry »
INVEST PHILIPPINES strives to provide excellence in professional service to its clients.
The purpose of collecting data from clients is in order to provide professional fiduciary services.
E. M. Murray observes a strict code of ethics and maintains a policy of strict confidentiality of all personal data submitted by clients whether by mail, email, fax or through information provided via consultation. Read the rest of this entry »
“The greatest benefit of mechanical trading systems is their ability to reprogram traders away from destructive types of behavior in favor of successful trading habits.”
–Richard Weissman
Perhaps W. Edwards Deming said it best: “If you can’t describe what you are doing as a process, you don’t know what you’re doing.”
I can count on one hand the number of traders I’ve met on the Philippine Stock Exchange trading floor who can describe every facet of their trading as a process. True, some veterans can kick butt trading ‘by their gut’ but they are few. I suspect the majority let their emotional state or whims of the moment play a inappropriately large role in putting on trades.
If you’re serious about your trading, you’ll systematize what you’re doing.
“Sir John Templeton was the first American investment manager to pursue investments in foreign markets. He chose Mobius as his general to lead the Templeton Emerging Markets Fund, which invested heavily in dozens of emerging and frontier markets years before most other funds got a clue.
My fave quote:
“All markets, being based more in mass psychology than objective reality, have a tendency to overshoot and undershoot economic growth rates. Judging the influence of irrational emotion is, by the way, the way we make most of our money.”
Mobius, by the way, was the keynote speaker for the Asia Pacific Investment Conference 2009 at the Renaissance Hotel in Makati City, Philippines.
Renown mentor and trainer of numerous world class traders including Monroe Trout, Toby Crabel, Stu Rose, James Altucher, John Hummer, Jake Burton Carpenter and Roy Niederhoffer.
Intriguing read, despite Niederhoffer’s obvious issues with risk management.
This book came out midway between two extremely high profile Niederhoffer fund blow-ups: the first in 1997 when he was arguable the top fund manager on Earth; the second in the 2007 subprime meltdown, a year after his Matador Fund was awarded by MarHedge as one of the best in the world. Read the rest of this entry »
If ever you were thinking of investing in accordance with popular academic wisdom, you’d better read this first.
Lowenstein dramatically illustrates what happens when you take high brow academics out of the ivory tower, complete with Nobel Prizes of Economics in tow, and turn them loose on a billion-dollar hedge fund. Read the rest of this entry »
“Cybernetics was defined by Wiener as ‘the science of control and communication, in the animal and the machine’—in a word, as the art of steermanship.”
–W. Ross Ashby
CYBERNETIC TRADE CONTROL SYSTEMS
Cybernetics embodies a multi-discipline theoretical framework which focuses on goal-directed systems. These systems use information, models, and control actions to steer towards and maintain a predefined objective while attempting to counteract anything which detracts from this objective.
Perhaps the most fundamental innovation of cybernetics is its explanation of purposiveness, or goal-directed behavior.
Cybernetics and Fund Management
“Goal-directed behavior” is particularly critical in the world of investment management. Read the rest of this entry »
There are several variations of pseudo-traders who have little to no face to face with the investing public. Two examples:
The Do-What-The-Boss-Tells-You-To-Do “Trader”: This is the institutional or mutual fund version of the cash-register-clerk “trader”. The only difference is the customers queuing up to buy or sell are institutional brokers. In this scenario, the folks barking orders on the other end of the phone aren’t interested in your advice. Read the rest of this entry »
“Ninety-nine percent of the people in the business are followers. They’re not creative and they’re not willing to rely upon themselves to make decisions, so they rely upon other people.”
–Tom Demark
The Study
Covered approximately 6000 years of raw price data from the Philippine stock market
As a Regulated Intermediary operating under the authority of the Securities Exchange Commission, Philippines and the Securities Regulation Code of the Philippines, I operate in full cooperation and sympathy with
Be advised that all clients–overseas clients (i.e., non-Filipino nationals) as well as Filipino nationals–are subject to AMLA protocol as a matter of course.
Defense Readiness meets Algorithmic Trading Systems
CONTINGENCY PLANS FOR CONTROLLING LOSS
The property of Fixed Downside Risk is one of the defining characteristics–if not the defining characteristic–of my investment methodology.
Furthermore, when it comes to Fixed Downside Risk, I’d go so far to say that 99% of all the retail stockbrokers I’ve met–in the Philippines and in the United States–received zero training in how to do this–nor indeed, even know what I’m talking about.
Don’t believe me? Ask them yourself.
“We focus on risk before we focus on return. The best investors do not target return. They focus first on risk.”
"So, theoretically if I had any money, here's how I would invest it..."
When it comes to wading through the tsunami of academic contributions to Modern Finance (or the fund and banking destruction left in its wake) I cling tightly to the maxim be careful who you listen to.*
Mind you, there are a number of academics I greatly admire for their analytical prowess and explanatory power with regards to the present and past financial crises, for instance Richard Epstein of the Hoover Institution, Martin Feldstein of Harvard, Simon Johnson and Ricardo Caballero of MIT.
However having something meaningful to say about the national or global economy is one thing; having a clue about generating competitive returns amidst the harsh realities of investment management is another thing altogether. Read the rest of this entry »
The question comes in different flavors. But I’ve heard it oh so many times that out of desperation I recently came up with a carefully crafted, now well-rehearsed response: Read the rest of this entry »
FOREIGN-OWNED brokerages again cornerd the bulk of the stock market’s trading last year, data from the Philippine Stock Exchange (PSE) showed.
Six of the top nine equity firms by market share were foreigners that had a combined share of almost half.
The stock exchange said topping the list was Deutsche Regis Partners, Inc., which had increased its market share to 15.73% or P240 billion worth of equity trading last year from 12.2% a year earlier.
If the latest stats are to be believed, upwards of 80% of the money “invested” by Filipinos is parked in typical garden-variety savings accounts. For tens of millions of Filipinos, having a savings account is regarded as safe, practical and prudent.
These same savings account holders would be astounded to learn, however, that relative to returns banks charge higher fees than the world’s top hedge fund managers.
Philippine Stock Exchange (PSE) President and Chief Executive Officer Francis Lim and Department of Agriculture (DA) Secretary Arthur Yap lead the signing of an agreement that will lay the foundation for an organized commodities market in the country.
Under the memorandum of agreement, the PSE and DA will work together in putting up an organized commodities market that will help ensure fair and transparent trading for agricultural products. Read the rest of this entry »
BEYOND unifying the two trading sites of the Philippines Stock Exchange (PSE) in the proposed headquarters to be located in Bonifacio Global City in Taguig, the bourse is also exploring the possibility of including the Philippine Dealing and Exchange Corp. (PDEx) in the same site.
In an interview last week, PSE director Ismael G. Cruz said the PSE is currently in talks with PDEx for the latter to join the local bourse in the new site, which may be completed in 2014.
“It makes sense for us to co-locate. We are the only two exchanges in the country—we [PSE] have the equities exchange [while] PDEx has the fixed-income exchange,” said Cruz. “And down the road, we will both have derivatives products.” Read the rest of this entry »
Back when mutual fund management was still an honorable gig. Sir John Templeton was the first mutual fund manager to begin actively investing in Emerging Markets (Mark Mobius is his right hand man in this regard). Peter Lynch of Fidelity Magellan was the top performing mutual fund manager of the 20th century. Read the rest of this entry »
Richard Epstein, one of the foremost legal thinkers in the United States, states his piece on the financial crisis, the financial bail-out, who is to blame, and what to do about it. An incredible speech.
George Soros extends his “theory of reflexivity” from abstraction to application in the realm of investing. His book, The New Paradigm for Financial Markets, offers a timely look at the credit crisis that reached crescendo in 2008. His views fall between prescience and vindication. Nevertheless, he concedes fallibility: “With all my great, deep understanding, I don’t always get the markets right.” Read the rest of this entry »
Mark Mobius of Franklin Templeton, keynote speaker of the 2009 Asia-Pacific Investment Conference, Manila, Philippines
According to a recent Philippine Stock Exchange study, less than 1/2 of 1% of all Filipino nationals have any investment in the Philippine stock market, with less than 1/10th of 1% actively participating in the Philippine stock market.
True: Not many value investors are coming out of the closet about technical analysis. Yet technical trading and value investing is not as controversial a union as you might think.
ASEAN Trading Link countries: Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam and the Philippines
The long-awaited ASEAN Trading Link may do more to stimulate both investment in the Philippines and Filipino investing than any other current development.
According to the PSE Info Matrix a Memorandum of Understanding was signed earlier in the year between the exchanges of the Philippines, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia and Thailand. Within twelve months, investors based in any of these countries will be able to buy stocks on the index of any participating ASEAN exchange, just as easily as purchasing at their home exchange. Read the rest of this entry »
Paul Tudor Jones, profiled in Jack Schwager's Market Wizards, one of the most successful fund managers of the 20th-21st centuries.
“Of all speculative blunders there are few greater than trying to average a losing game.”
–Jesse Livermore
Average down. Of the many age-old trading maxims this was one of the first that made me pause and wonder.
For a number of years I’d simply assumed this to be one of the popular falsehoods foisted on the unsuspecting public. Imagine my surprise when I heard it regularly parroted among seasoned pros on the trading floor. Read the rest of this entry »
ASEAN Trading Link welcomes the Hochiminh Stock Exchange
Five ASEAN exchanges – Bursa Malaysia, the Indonesia Stock Exchange, the Philippine Stock Exchange, Singapore Exchange Limited (SGX) and the Stock Exchange of Thailand entered into an Accession Agreement with the Hochiminh Stock Exchange today that will include the latter in a regional pact which will explore cross-border trading amongst the ASEAN capital markets via an electronic gateway. Read the rest of this entry »
Do you, your broker or your investment manager have a pre-flight checklist?
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“After 20 years of trading, I find it almost impossible to trade without a plan that does not have fixed rules.”
–Robert Krauscz, New Market Wizard
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Can you imagine the pilot of a jumbo jet climbing into the cockpit, firing up the engines, and hurtling down the runway into the sky without a second thought? I mean, no checklist, no clearance from the tower, no nothin’? Read the rest of this entry »
“The Market tells you where your market is, and you’d d••n well better listen.”
–Jim Clark
Assessment and Outlook
Cautiously optimistic. As of September 10, the NYSE Composite Index and the Nasdaq Index are at their highest levels of the year. Emerging Markets are boasting the best year-to-date returns of the last 10 years, as are the ASEAN markets . 2009 is the Philippine Composite Index’s best performing year-to-date over the past 5 years. All this suggests a strong 4th Quarter.
In a thrust to further develop the Philippine capital market and enhance students’ financial literacy, the Philippine Stock Exchange (PSE) has teamed up with the Department of Education (DepEd) to pursue the integration of topics about the capital markets in secondary education.
The PSE’s surveillance department would continue to have access to data on broker identity in case there was need to investigate or monitor any illegal trading activity. — PHOTO: AP
MANILA – THE Philippine Stock Exchange (PSE) has set new rules allowing brokerages to trade anonymously in a bid to attract more foreign investors and boost liquidity in the equities market.
"We have a 'zero fail' mission." Colonel Mark Tillman, head of the Presidential Airlift Group
In Pursuit of Zero Fail
When it comes to certain tasks, the consequences of failure are so negative and far reaching they are almost too terrible to contemplate.
One such task is safely airlifting the President of the United States on Air Force One. Other “no fail” occupations would be the operation of nuclear power plants and the deployment of ballistic nuclear submarines. For those involved in such work and for those whom they serve, failure is not an option. Read the rest of this entry »
Part of my induction onto the main trading floor of the Philippine Stock Exchange was an intro to the phenomenon of “Ghost Month”.
According to Chinese tradition, which is exceptionally strong in the Philippines, late August ushers in Ghost Month on the Chinese lunar calendar. If folklore is to be believed, it’s bad luck to buy things, bad luck to start new business, and bad luck to do much of anything during Ghost Month.
Philippine Stock Exchange and Thomson Reuters partnership
The Philippine Stock Exchange, in partnership with international news provider Thomson Reuters Philippines, launched on August 19, 2009 the new look for the Exchange?s electronic display board in Makati City, located at the Insular Building on Ayala Avenue corner Paseo de Roxas, one of the busiest crossroads in the financial district. The electronic board now publishes real-time market prices, news and summaries, designed to bring the stock market closer to the local investing community.
By request, here’s the latest on the Philippine Stock Exchange telecoms, plus a few other issues that have had truly gargantuan moves since January 1, 2009.
If you’re not sitting down, now would be a good time to do so.
Robert James Shiller serves as the Arthur M. Okun Professor of Economics at Yale University and is a Fellow at the Yale International Center for Finance, Yale School of Management. He is also the founder and chief economist of the investment management firm MacroMarkets LLC. Shiller is ranked among the 100 most influential economists of the world.
“The greatest benefit of mechanical trading systems is their ability to reprogram traders away from destructive types of behavior in favor of successful trading habits.”
General Electric Co. will pay a $50 million civil penalty to settle charges filed by the Securities and Exchange Commission accusing the conglomerate of improper accounting in order to make its financial results appear more attractive to investors.
The SEC said that GE violated securities laws four times between 2002 and 2003 when accounting for items such as commercial paper funding and the sale of train locomotives and aircraft engine spare parts. The SEC said the changes helped GE maintain a string of earnings that beat Wall Street expectations each quarter from 1995 through 2004.
“GE bent the accounting rules beyond the breaking point,” Robert Khuzami, head of the SEC’s enforcement division, said in a statement. The company didn’t admit or deny the allegations.
(This was read on both trading floors on August 3, 2009 before trading opened.)
Lord, we thank you for sending us Corazon Cojuangco Aquino, who, by her good deeds and leadership has been your golden champion for truth, freedom, and peace in the Philippines. As a national treasure, her departure from this world is an immeasurable loss for the country, which has benefited from her services and sacrifices as both commander-in-chief and mother to the nation.
But as Cory Aquino joins You, our maker, she also transforms into an indestructible symbol of democracy for the world; a never-ending beacon of hope and strength for the Filipino people to keep a vigilant watch over freedom; and most importantly, the better half of an idea or belief, of which Ninoy Aquino is the other half, that the Filipino is worth dying for. And because ideas never die, our beloved Cory Aquino
will never really be far away from us. Read the rest of this entry »
There’s much to learn from Nobel Laureate Robert Merton, both what to do and what not to do.
Hailed as the Newton of Modern Finance, in academic circles he’s perhaps most famous for the Black-Scholes-Merton options pricing formula, for which he shared the 1998 Nobel Prize for Economics.
In 1998 Merton was partly to blame for the collapse of Long Term Capital Management–a hedge fund which failed spectacularly by losing $4.6 billion in less than four months. In January 2009, his financial advisory firm Trinsum Group, filed for bankruptcy.
Mr. Klarman is President of The Baupost Group, L.L.C. Founded in 1982, Baupost discretionarily manages $15 billion for a number of institutional and wealthy individual investors. Baupost uses a value discipline with an event-driven bias to find global opportunities in such diverse areas as publicly-traded and private equities, bankrupt and financially-distressed debt, and real estate.
Note: The quality of this video is, well, abysmal. Nevertheless, it is one of the most profound I’ve come across in the last 10 years. This video is provided for your information and enjoyment. Although I admire Klarman’s investment philosophy greatly, I would not categorize myself as a Value Investor per se.
E. M. M.
E. M. Murray. Managed Equities. Fixed Downside Risk.
MANILA, Philippines — Global financial services giant JP Morgan is telling investors to fatten their exposure in the Philippines, saying the country’s prospects are boosted by low interest rates, a strong peso, reforms in the power sector, an encouraging mining industry, and government mega-infrastructure spending.
JP Morgan is keeping its “overweight” call on the Philippines and advises investors to increase their holdings in the country, JP Morgan Securities (Asia Pacific) Ltd. chief Asian and emerging markets equity strategist Adrian Mowat said after an investor conference late Thursday.
It was JP Morgan’s first investor conference in the Philippines since the 1997-98 Asian economic crisis affected the country. The conference attracted around 80 fund managers, mostly from abroad.
“Now, investors are waking up to this market and people are increasingly going to a plane and coming back to Manila,” Mowat said.
“You live in a relative world when you look at emerging markets,” he said. “The Philippines started performing only in August last year. The reforms in the power sector are all relatively new, the movement in onshore bond yields is relatively new.”
JP Morgan Securities Philippines Inc. head of equity research Kelly Lim-Bate said there were four key drivers that would keep investors glued to the Philippine growth story this year.
She said these were a strong peso because of the country’s similarly robust balance-of-payments position; interest rates that would continue to be low and in turn spur loan growth; the government’s P1.7-trillion infrastructure spending program; and foreign direct investments coming back into the country, specifically in manufacturing, power and mining.
-ELECTRONIC LINKAGE AMONG ASEAN EXCHANGES Top officials of the ASEAN Exchanges sign a Memorandum of Understanding for an electronic trading linkage project that will position the ASEAN as an asset class and a viable investment destination. Photo shows (from left): Mr. Erry Firmansyah, President Director, Indonesia Stock Exchange; Mr. Yusli Mohamed Yusoff, Chief Executive Officer, Bursa Malaysia Berhad; Mr. Francisco Ed. Lim, President and Chief Executive Officer, The Philippine Stock Exchage, Inc.; Mr. Hseih Fu Hua, Chairman, Singapore Exchange Securities Trading Limited; and Ms. Patareeya Benjapolchai, President, The Stock Exchange of Thailand.
MANILA, Philippines - The proposed regional stock market will have to address regulatory differences, agree on a common currency and trading technology, and inform the current pool of investors about opportunities in the integrated bourse before it can take off, analysts said Monday.
Southeast Asian regulators must particularly lay the ground rules, starting with the currency to be used, Harry Liu of brokerage Summit Securities said in an interview.
Mr. Liu said the integration of the stock exchanges is a good idea, but regulators should carefully study how it will be implemented.
He noted that while it provides opportunities for some local firms, it can also disadvantage others since companies will start competing with more developed firms in more advanced economies like Singapore.
The board of the Philippine Stock Exchange (PSE) has approved the local exchange’s participation in a scheme allowing cross-border trading.
The tie-up is meant to allow exchanges in the region to deal with global pressures as a group. Regional bourses have been pummeled by the chaos on Wall Street following the collapse of major US investment banks.
The so-called ASEAN Board will link the PSE with the Bursa Malaysia, Ho Chi Minh Stock Exchange, Indonesia Stock Exchange, Singapore Stock Exchange and the Stock Exchange of Thailand.
In a separate interview, Grace C. Cerdenia of brokerage 2TradeAsia expects participating countries to maintain their respective corporate regulators, even as she cited the need for a uniform regulatory format especially for settlement rules.
“If a Filipino investor opens an account in a foreign country for example, will he be bound by the settlement rules there or by the rules here? Will the proposed bourses have common rules?” she asked.
Irving I. Ackerman of brokerage Ackerman & Co., Inc. said integrating regional bourses would be easier to implement this time with the ease in procuring dollars now compared with two decades ago, when he claimed to have first proposed the integration of regional exchanges. But it would be up to the exchanges which currency to use, he added.
The three brokers agreed that the proposed regional stock market would not take away local capital from domestic companies and will give Philippine firms access to foreign capital.
In a telephone interview, PSE President and Chief Executive Officer Francis Ed Lim said he and his counterparts have yet to schedule a meeting where they will discuss how to go about with the integration. Under a proposed memorandum of agreement, participating exchanges will commit to the trading of 30 companies each.
Mr. Ackerman said it would be better for the Philippines to start first with 10 stocks that will assure investors a good return.
Some analysts earlier noted that while the integrated bourse could allow market participants to share expertise, local brokerages might also lose out if investors choose to transact with an overseas firm to buy Philippine stocks.
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Paris E. M. Murray