Shaun T. Dy's Business & Economics Perspective Blog

BusinessWorld Online I could remember how Buwan Ng Wika (Month of the Language) was often celebrated in schools. Just then, I remembered as August 2022 is ending and September 2022 will begin a few hours from now. One of my memories of the Buwan Ng Wika program, when I was in Grade 4, was the presentation of "Kuko Ng Agila" (Claws of the Eagle) song. One scene also had the late Flor Contemplacion's execution. I had mixed feelings about Contemplacion's death. Later, the late former Philippine President, Fidel V. Ramos, repaired ties with Singapore.  Ramos was even mentioned in the late Lee Kuan Yew's economic masterpiece, From Third World to First . Lee Kuan Yew also mentioned the following in his book on pages 304-305: ... Millions of Filipino men and women had to leave their country for jobs abroad beneath their level of education . Filipino professionals, whom we recruited to work in Singapore are good as our own. Indeed, their architects, artists, and musicians

I was thinking about several bad reviews. I'd order food from Foodpanda and Grab where I notice some falsified claims. It also reminded me of several false claims like the Robinsons Galleria "snakeman", the fried towel from Jollibee (which I still believe was an act of sabotage), and maybe I could talk about several fake reviews just to get attention. Mistakes do happen (at times) and I remembered someone wrote a review of few mistakes on a restaurant. Meanwhile, I noticed somebody could just deliberately put an insect, picture it, badmouth, the restaurant, and the deed is done. I think the same could be very true for the bad reviews of AXA Philippines at Trustpilot (read here ). I really feel like asking if Trustpilot can truly be trusted or not. I decided to do some research about Trustpilot on Google . It's no surprise that sitejabber has Trustpilot at a very low score . Again, I can't be sure if it's not that easy to take down fake reviews. I decided to re

Right now, I'm glad that the K+12 education (read more about it  here ) got implemented during the time of the late Benigno Simeon C. Aquino III. There are times that I tend to remember how dreadful high school life can be, how I kept complaining that high school is difficult nearly 24/7, I felt weekends weren't even weekends (and I ended up addicted to gaming and television as a form of escapism), and how often I felt like I wanted to drop out of high school. It was the K+10 curriculum which was six years of elementary and four years of high school. I barely passed and I always considered myself stupid, therefore, if you're stupid, you can't learn anything.  The emphasis on grades became another thing. Too many times, we're told that if our grades in math and science weren't good--why not take Hotel & Restaurant Management (HRM)? Not even being told that a chef's salary can be decent convinced me it may not be a bad thing. I was even told that if HRM wa

Forex Factory I was looking at my GInvest funds and wondering, "Should I still be buying more?" Right now, what I'm doing is to value cost average . That is, it's best to invest a certain sum per month and buy more during a crash. Though, some people prefer to keep it safe by cost averaging. I was looking at my three recent investments (aside from AXA Chinese Tycoon Fund) are namely the ATRAM Philippine Equity Smart Index Fund, and the two feeder funds namely (1) ATRAM Consumer Trends Feeder Fund, and (2) ATRAM Global Technology Feeder Fund. So far, my invested amount has had a slight profit as technology stocks have rallied. The Investopedia defines the bear market rally as: Bear market rally refers to a sharp, short-term rebound in share prices amid a longer-term bear market decline . Bear market rallies are treacherous for investors who mistakenly come to believe they mark the end of an extended downturn. As the primary bearish trend reasserts itself, the disappoin

I guess it's time to talk about some of my all-time favorite fast-food outlets, Jollibee. I remembered writing about how Jollibee is proof that the Philippines is more than ready for an inflow of foreign direct investments (FDI) (read here ). I was able to hear the news a few days ago. However, I decided to just write a new blog entry now after I had my thoughts together.  Here are some details from The Philippine Star to which one can read the following: MANILA, Philippines —  After four rounds of competing in four categories that included 16 fried chicken brands, Jollibee's Chickenjoy managed to win the hearts of the staff of a popular American food website as the "Best Fast-Food Fried Chicken" in the United States. Admittedly a subjective taste test that had "no criteria" of judging other than to "follow their hearts," the staff of the American food website Eater adjudged the Chickenjoy as the best among all the different types of fried chickens

CNN Today is Indian Independence Day. It's very easy to look down at India that's until you realize that it went from an impoverished former British colony to an emerging country. It's 75 years of India's independence from Great Britain. I feel it's time to write another economics-related post for this blog. Before that, you may want to read about Deng Xiaoping's real great leap forward (read here ). Though, if you don't mind then you can start reading this post which I will talk about in this post. CNN has Rhea Mogul shares this insight on India's economic growth : Rise of an economic power   Following independence, India was in chaos. Reeling from a bloody partition that killed between 500,000 and 2 million people, and uprooted an estimated 15 million more, it was synonymous with poverty .   Average life expectancy in the years after the British left was just 37 for men and 36 for women, and only 12% of Indians were literate. The country's GDP was

  I think it can be a heated debate at times between (1) cost averaging and (2) buying low and then selling high strategies. I was looking at what Warren Buffett said with this: If you like spending six to eight hours per week working on investments, do it. If you don’t, then dollar-cost average into index funds . I prefer to call it simply cost averaging. It's where one puts the same amount of money per month for a selected period of time. It's like the PHP 8,000.00 rule where one may choose to invest PHP 1,000.00 for eight months or PHP 2,000.00 for four months in buying stocks. Meanwhile, Buffett advises that most people should buy index funds instead. I decided to get the Philippine Equity Smart Index Fund via cost averaging and did some lump sums during the crash.  Cost averaging is pretty much a safer way to avoid timing the market . The market moves not just during the opening but also during the closing . That's why I pretty much want to avoid playing casino with da

Today would've been the 96th birthday of the late John L. Gokongwei Jr. Right now, I want to write this blog entry in his honor. Once he spoke at the University of San Carlos (USC) but I never had the chance to shake his hand. I did meet Mr. Bunny Pages of Mooon Cafe during my MBA days. Now, I'd like to write some life lessons on Gokongwei. I decided to start thinking about my advocacy for economy reforms. Back then, I remembered when I asked people if they'd listen to Gokongwei or Hilario Davide Jr. Some said, "If it's business, it's Gokongwei. If it's law, it's Davide." Though, Davide Jr. had erroneously made a statement concerning foreign direct investments (FDIs). That's why I asked about Davide Jr. or Gokongwei when it's regarding business. Though, a better question to ask is if you'd listen to Davide Jr. or the other UN diplomat grandpa, Singaporean-Indian Kishore Mahbubani (read here ). One of the things I noticed in my recent ad