I have always been interested in the stock market but between FOREX trading and holding a stock-options in a fortune 500 company that didn’t change value for years it took a pandemic to get me into the market.  I had every intention of funding my Interactive Brokers account but the logistics of funding my account from the Philippines with limited financial services available due to the pandemic I decided to analyze the Philippine market so my wife could invest.  She opened an account with BDO Nomura and while there are some technical issues and occasional downtime it gets the job done.

If you are someone like me who likes day trading, this is NOT the investment for you.  It can take anywhere from a day to weeks to open and close positions if you aren’t willing to take a beating on market orders. I’m seeing some stocks with volumes less than $5000 (250,000 PHP) per day. I would typically be very pessimistic about such a small market which is so prone to corruption but the slow pace of this market seems to really reduce the risk.

If you are looking for data for market analysis than it may be a rough road ahead.  I was able to get the data I needed but the data sources I can find are incomplete and some don’t seem to update very often. This is a slow paced market so having to wait for data is something I can deal with. If I wasn’t so busy with other projects I would probably build a data providing service since the data I have is probably more complete than most people have due to my data mining experience.

The biggest problem I see with this market is the limits on foreign investment.  Whoever thought this was a good idea clearly has never heard of a Delaware Corporation.  People all over the world create corporations in Delaware all of the time and the U.S. is happy to collect taxes on them even though many of them have almost no operations within the U.S.  If these corporations allowed unlimited investments by foreigners, at least in the common stocks, that would be a HUGE potential for taxable income for the government and the increase in capital would help Philippine companies compete globally.  If the Philippine people want to stay a small economy, that is their right but the U.S. has the largest economy in the world and I’m quite sure the fact that they accept everyone’s money is a big reason for that.

If you are trying to get rich quick I would say the Philippine stock market is the last place for you, but if you want to make a small long-term investment with big potential than it is probably the best place to be.  As this market gets de-regulated I could see volume increase and prices grow within the next 10-20 years so I think putting anywhere from $1,000 to $10,000 into this market is a good idea (50,000 PHP to 500,000 PHP) if you don’t expect to need that money again for the next 20 years.  I have learned a lot from this experience but when the world re-opens I think I’ll be headed for the higher-paced markets of the U.S. Knowing there isn’t much chance to lose a lot of money in the Philippine stock market is a big plus but knowing that there is no chance of getting rich off of it takes ALL the fun out of investing.