Shaun T. Dy's Business & Economics Perspective Blog

I really feel that some people celebrate something but never understand it. I feel the EDSA Revolution of 1986 is just one of them. It's often written in history books that the late Ferdinand E. Marcos Sr. is written as a dictator. Reading through From Third World to First did give the late Lee Kuan Yew's insights on the Marcos Sr. regime. The way Lee Kuan Yew described Cesar Virata showed that claims of a Marcos "parliament" were moot. The late Benigno Simeon A. Aquino Jr.'s humorous speech nailed it right. Aquino Jr. even mentioned every bit of inconsistency. The book is often used by critics to lambast Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr., but have they really read the rest of the context? I'm afraid not and some people on Facebook probably still have not even a faint clue why the Marcos Sr. administration weren't the golden years. Once again, I want these people to read Lee Kuan Yew's entire book rather than just cherry-pick from it! Revisiting the Marcos Sr. r

Business World Online I'm currently invested in stocks via equity funds. Personally, I find trying to DIY stocks to be easier said than done. Though, there's no harm in learning it yourself. Either way, Warren Buffett recommends cost averaging into an index as an alternative (read the article here ). Though, I have zero intention to do day trading because it's absolutely just gambling. Charlie Munger would wisely tell the young it's but a speculative orgy.  From the Philippine Star, I read about how stocks are moving sideways . This would be an excerpt of what's really going on: MANILA, Philippines — Stocks will continue to move sideways this week as investors weigh the impact of sticky inflation and rising interest rates on corporate earnings . The local equities market sustained its downward move on the back of a busy week capped by the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas’  50-basis-point rate hike. The BSP raised its policy interest rate by half a percentage point, bring

Bulatlat It's very easy to open Facebook (or any related platform) and find lots of stupidity , right? There have been idiotic comments I find on Facebook such as FDI is this and that. We can find "thought leader groups" such as Alliance of Concerned Teachers, Anakpawis, Anakbayan, Bayan Muna, IBON Foundation, Kabataan Partylist, League of Filipino Students, and Philippine Anti-Fascist League (PH Antifa) who keep ranting about FDI as this and that. I even remember somebody dared to say that FDI caused Egypt to dry up. Ironically, North Korea and Venezuela, two protectionist countries, have very bad pollution problems. I'd blame it that they don't have the money to do a clean-up drive. How can you clean up a polluted river without the right equipment? How can you expect better power efficiency with outdated equipment that keep coughing up, cough, cough, lots of black smoke?  All the talks on social media can be very funny. The big irony is that all calls for "

Read.Cash There are so many financial gurus right now. I kep hearing stories of people who became so rich so fast. However, the basic drill of any claim is that if it's too good to be true then run . This is why people fall for people like the late Charles Ponzi and the even more infamous, the late Bernard Madoff. Now, you have people who claim that they could easily earn that much money in such a short amount of time . This is really no less fishy than the claims that you can earn high returns with very little risk. I feel like revisiting moments claimed to have achieved "so much" at my age. Some people even claim that they had made (or have) that much money at such a young age. This isn't the case for big entrepreneurs since it took years for people like the late Henry Sy Sr., John Gokongwei Jr., Lucio Tan Sr., and maybe I can say Warren Edward Buffett never became rich so fast! I could easily lie right now that I have this amount of money. I could easily take photo

19Flags.com It's Valentine's Day, right? Not so happy Valentine's Day when you think that many Filipino women (or termed as Filipina in Filipino English) are marrying foreigners to flee poverty . Just reading the article from the Philippine Star is making me think about why Valentine's Day, like Christmas, isn't as magical as people want to make it. I could call it a Cinderella story. The story of Cinderella is often told as a woman who gets rescued by her Prince Charming. Maybe, some remember the classic Disney's Cinderella from their childhood. Why is the Cinderella mentality so prevalent in the Philippines? It's because of the lack of job opportunities. The talks of families torn apart by the OFW phenomenon can't be minimized. The memes of the OFW provider vs. the recipient wasting the money is no joke.  This reminds me of what's often called the American dream. I even think of some people I met who wished that a white man will swoop them away to

I just read from the Inquirer that House Minority Leader Marcelino Libanan wants to encourage the learning of Mandarin . Sadly, the article also says the following regarding Libanan's aim of wanting to learn Mandarin: “ If we are going to continue to rely on the export of labor to help drive our economic growth, we might as well equip our future workers with Mandarin and other foreign language skills to further build up their competitiveness, ” Libanan said on Sunday. Libanan, the representative of Pagtibayin at Palaguin ang Pangkabuhayang Pilipino (4Ps) party list, noted: “In foreign labor markets, we already have the edge because our workers can speak English. We should now aspire to double that advantage by encouraging more Filipinos to learn Mandarin at an early age.” This reminds me what we can't keep relying on what I call the labor export policy. I even wrote an article addressing the destructive obsession with OFW remittances . Sadly, the lawmaker may still be focused o

Business World Online The Philippine Stock Market Index (PSEi) has had another decrease. The score reached 7,000+ and I was getting pretty excited. I was thinking, "Should I sell my stock index or should I continue averaging into it?" I'm still holding some funds because I'm going to invest more in the   long term  than do day trading. I agree with Charlie Munger that day trading is nothing more than a   speculative orgy . I got through Google News and found some factors that caused the recent decrease. I'd like to do this not as an analyst but as a lay investor and blogger.  Profit-taking  before  key data The  Business World  website sites that there was profit-taking before key data . I was reading through and found out that there was indeed some profit taking The score that went from 7,000+ to 6,800+ can be affected. Here's an excerpt of the report which caught my attention: “Philippine stocks were sold ahead of the January inflation print tomorrow, and  i