Shaun T. Dy's Business & Economics Perspective Blog

As a child born in the 1980s, I would say I was born during the Marcos Years and I was about a year old when the EDSA Revolution happened. That means I've passed through a lot of stuff rendered obsolete today such as dial-up Internet (which my parents refused to get due to how it interrupted the phone lines unlike the Digital Subscriber Line), cassette players, VHS players, and may I mention the education system . It might be fun to think of times when people of my age group watched The Flintstones or The Flintstone Kids (picture above) during the 1990s imagining school during the stone age. However, these photos today may make me cringe to think about how I grew up in an outdated education system. My recollection of the outdated education system in my eyes from the 1990s before K+12 got implemented My current readings through the book From Third World to First by the late Lee Kuan Yew made me want to write this. The recent chapters I'm in are "Deng Xiaoping's China&qu

CoRRECT Movement I remembered how often I complain about the lack of discipline in the Philippines. I went to Singapore in 1998 and it was a very disciplined, clean country. In fact, it's a very fine country because petty offenses do get fined such as littering. Doing such will encourage peace and order. I felt it was what Filipinos needed--more discipline! I was only 13 years old when I first went to Singapore. Even worse, high school economics was only taught during the graduating year --something that felt stupid and very last minute even if it was one whole year of discussion. It was a waste, really, to have a teacher who was as brilliant and strict as the late Miriam Palma Defensor-Santiago (MDS), if economics was taught as a "last-minute subject". I even flunked the first grading though I did get better with her help. I even feel that teacher of mine is better off teaching abroad because she was too brilliant to be left in a dull country. Education should've bee

Sugbo.PH I remembered driving across Talamban sometime before the COVID-19 pandemic. One of the restaurants that caught my curiosity was called The Spice or Cherry's the Spice. The letter "i" is shaped like chili to give you this note that the restaurant is targeted towards people who enjoy spicy food. Yet, it has become very popular among Filipino customers. Cherry's the Spice was another one I was curious about but not ready to anticipate the different regions of cooking. It's pretty much cooking in Region V - Bicol Region is different from Region VII - Visayas. This restaurant had a cottage-like feel. This restaurant has won the best Indian restaurant award from Sunstar Cebu .    TripAdvisor The type of food here is similar yet different to Bollywood. Bollywood is pretty much North Indian for most of its cuisine. Cherry's the Spice focuses on Hyderabad-style cooking which I compare to the Bicol region. If I'm not wrong, some of its food has fresh coconu

It might be easy for some to ignore the obvious phishing emails such as a complete stranger asking for money, a too-good-to-be-true employment offer, a Ponzi scheme offering huge returns in such a short time, a pyramid scam that promises to pay you every time you recruit, etc. when you've guilt some experience. I was once hit by a pyramid scam and lost a small amount of money. I decided not to pursue recruiting because I was too busy trying to get my bachelor's degree in business administration. However, what's so often ignored is the world of employee fraud. Besides, some phishing activities can be done by legally employed financial institution employees. Don't believe me? Well, I believe that's what happened to me today when I lost some money in a GCash "verification" process since it looked so legitimate. Apparently, the GCash scam was done were legally employed staff and not some programmer. Some people are so greedy that they want money fast regardles

It didn't help that I had a bad night of aching muscles and earache. I woke up in the morning finding an email from "GCash" which looked legitimate. What happened was that I lost some money in my GCash wallet. Fortunately, it wasn't my life savings compared to the loss of Tong Zou--a Chinese-Canadian who lost it all during the rise of Quadriga-CX. I won't disclose any amount of money in my personal accounts for confidential reasons . What I'm going to write right now is a warning. Granted, I'm not tech-savvy so I wasn't too aware of phishing. I did reject a couple of phishing such as those too good to be true employment.  However, I wasn't so wise today and ended up "verifying" my account and lost the money I put in the GCash wallet set aside to pay for groceries. The official GCash site or the application is where transactions should be done. I even forgot that the MPIN and the OTP should be kept personal . I had to change my MPIN becaus

I'm amazed that there are some people who still insist that the Philippines should retain the 60-40 investment scheme or even lesser shares  ownership for foreign investments. The argument always goes such as (1) Filipinos must be the majority shareholder because it's their country, (2) only foreign investors will get rich if you let them invest in here 100%, and (3) you're basically selling land. This is the problem when people can't tell the difference between shares ownership and land ownership . Shares ownership means owning a percentage of the company. Land ownership is where the land is leased upon. This is where I would like to argue why easing certain foreign investment restrictions is necessary. An illustration that will help see why 60-40 is nothing more than overpriced rent I would like to give this picture. Let's imagine you're a businessman and you're looking for a space to rent. Not everyone is willing to sell their commercial space but there

Philippine Primer One of the problems I keep facing (or hate about) in my country is the habit called "Filipino time". It's pretty much the person who says "I'm on the way." but the person is still in the toilet or fixing one's makeup. One of the things I heard at the University of San Carlos was when the guidance counselor said, "We follow Philippine time which is on time." The syllabus of the international marketing class said, "Filipino time isn't recognized in the international market." Yet, it's called "Filipino time" for some reason. I remembered how I literally shouted in public because I agreed to meet with my groupmates at 1:30 P.M. and they arrived as expected--an hour later. Please, one hour is really a lot of time. I prefer to call it simply being late  and the term "Filipino time" was probably just invented to justify the common bad trait. Any sensible Filipino is bound to say that the habit i

I was thinking about this video above where somebody said, "Don't invest in AXA or make the loss that I did." It was a person named Bill Baker. Try checking out the comments in this video and be ready for facedesk comments . I was thinking about how this guy doesn't realize that AXA isn't about instant gains, there are premium charges to pay which is money allocated to the insurance portion of the investment. Did this guy expect his money to multiply fast? Some people commenting on the video are commenting out of ignorance. It might be worth asking, "Did you keep withdrawing your funds or do you even bother to understand the ups and downs of the equity market?" The money market is no easy game. I remembered being told to hold my Retail Treasury Bond (RTB) after selling my first bond and reinvesting it again. I decided to get a Long-Term Negotiable Certificate of Deposit (LTNCD) as another investment. I'm trying to learn petty cash investments on GCas

I haven't returned to writing about Axie Infinity because I didn't get into it. I may have been foolish enough to get scammed by a family friend. However, I started to think that, "If it's too good to be true then don't buy it!" I always wanted instant gratification out of greed and impatience. I think two reasons why investors get into bad deals are because of greed and impatience--wanting the money now. It's also why some people join the drug cartels. Right now, Axie Infinity may have been so last 2018 (and I keep getting a lot of irritating play-to-earn ads on the Internet) but it doesn't mean it's going to be that sustainable.  On March 30, 2022, CNBC also reported on this incident where more than USD 600 million was stolen from the makers of Axie Infinity : The makers of one of the most popular blockchain-based online games said Tuesday that hackers were able to steal assets worth about $625 million from the gaming company and its players. The