rules to live by (guide for the year of the rabbit)

saw this at one of the forums at financemanila.net while trading stocks this morning. It was posted by antediluvianist.
It made me laugh, think and at the same time realize more facts about life itself than what I already know.

I just thought this is something worthwhile to share.
:)


First, do not end sentences in a preposition often.

If anything can go wrong, it will – Murphy’s Law

One of the keys to happiness is a bad memory – Brown’s Rule

If you don’t need it and don’t want it, there is always plenty of it – Murphy’s Law of Supply

In America, it’s not how much an item costs, it’s how much you save – Paulg’s Law

Don’t believe everything you hear or anything you say – Murray’s Law

Marriage teaches you loyality, forbearance, selfrestraint, meekness, and a great many other things you wouldn’t need if you had stayed single – Townsend’s Law

It doesn’t matter if you win or lose… until you lose – O.J.’s Law

Assumption is the mother of all screw-ups – Wethern’s Law of Suspended Judgment

There are no answers, only cross-references – Weiner’s Law of Libraries

To err is human, but to really f*ck things up requires a computer – Law of Unreliability

Once you give up integrity, the rest is easy – Evan’s Law

Politics is the gentle art of getting votes from the poor and campaign funds from the rich by promising to protect each from the other – Ameringer’s Axiom

When a politician gets an idea, he usually gets it wrong – the 5th Rule of Politics

No matter what goes wrong, it will probably look right – Scott’s First Law

Murphy’s Law always hits at the worst time – Lanning’s Law

Things get worse under pressure – Murphy’s Law of Thermodynamics

Sometimes it takes several years to recognize the obvious – Sy’s Law of Science

If you are in a hole, stop digging – 1st Rule of Excavation

There is no issue so small that it can’t be blown out of proportion – Ruckert’s Law

The degree to which you overreact to information will be in inverse proportion to its accuracy – Weatherwax’s Postulate

The item you had your eye on the minute you walked in will be taken by the person in front of you – Cafeteria Law

Nothing is as temporary as that which is called permanent – Jose’s Axiom

Nothing is as permanent as that which is called temporary – Corollary

Free time that unexpectedly becomes available will be wasted – Sandiland’s Law

The one who does the least work will get the most credit – Shapiro’s Law of Reward

No matter how often a lie is shown to be false, there will remain a percentage of people who believe it to be true – Law of the Lie

The secret of success is sincerity. Once you can fake that you’ve got it made – Glyme’s Formula for Success

Never replicate a successful experiment – Fett’s Law of the Lab

Accuracy is the sum total of your compensating mistakes – Wingfield’s Axiom

As soon as you’re doing what you wanted to be doing, you want to be doing something else – Law of Living

There’s no time like the present for postponing what you don’t want to do – Hecht’s Law

Whichever way you turn upon entering an elevator, the buttons will be on the opposite side – Gluck’s Law

If credit can possibly go to someone else, it will – Kovaleski’s Dictum

If you don’t do anything, you can’t do anything wrong – Cameron’s Law

It is impossible for anyone to learn that which he thinks he already knows – Plutarch’s Rule

The Bible tells us to love our neighbors, and also to love our enemies; probably because they are generally the same people – Chesterton

A little inaccuracy can save a lot of explanation – Munroe’s Teaching Principle

You never really learn to swear until you learn to drive – Grandpa Charnock’s Law

Man is always ready to die for an idea, provided that the idea is not quite clear to him – Eldridge’s Law of War

If you don’t care where you are, you’re not lost – Rune’s Rule of the Road

The probability of someone’s asking irrelevant questions requiring lengthy responses increases in direct proportion to how tired you are of the meeting. – Bowlby’s Law

:) oh and may i add something else?
Learn the Rules then Break Some. hehe...cheers!

3 to 4 in the morning

Image from Photoshop Art @ Flickr

The clock on the right side of my laptop changed from 3:42 to 3:43am. From a distance the roosters echoed out their orchestrated shouts while I heard the door of my bathroom creaking, its hinges rusty from water sprayed during bath time.

My brain began to fall slowly to slumber. To the place where people had wings and each scene changed from happy to bad to weird in less than a minute. Inception? Or perhaps just wide awake and dreaming. I looked around and the only light I see is my screen and a mobile charger with an eerie blue glow.

Yes, I am still wide awake.

But my fingers moved on their own, a pit pat on the keyboard while my fan whirred incessantly. I managed to blink my lids, my eyes fighting my brain against going back towards the covers where pillows and sheep jumping over fences waited.

There's too much going on inside my brain. I browsed through facebook, then to a finance forum, then through blogger. My thoughts a jumble of status updates, bus explosions at Manila, to stock prices snapping back up after a five day low.

Everybody seemed to have their own say on everything.

People calling for attention or perhaps just voicing out the random nerve impulses their brains send to their hands. Happy, sad, excited, proud, or just selling a few colored shoes at bargain prices. Either way, the status updates showed a group of people I am connected with. Either by blood or friendship, they echo my ramblings, like a gong vibrating loud.

Loud. Politicians and every civic group are all crying out for justice over a bomb placed below a bus seat leaving 2 dead. Despite intel, people focused on the latest entertainment news and who got married with whom, nobody got cautious of 2 people riding a bus with a bag and leaving without it. Fear is present and alive.

Alive and resurrected from after 5 days of watching red, I grinned like a Cheshire cat upon seeing green on the ticker screen this morning. Celebration and cash flowing in, the Philippines' stock market thrived on good news. As of yesterday morning, the good news was people are much more optimistic about the government. The foreign investors thought so too.

I am happy that they did.
I am hoping they still think so until today.

Today, my eyes fight to stay awake battling my brain. A hardheaded pair trying to control the center of my thoughts. But as the winner stood proud over the defeated, my eyelids begin to slowly close. White flag waving up and down.

The sound of a motorcycle woke me up again. I muttered a prayer to please make tomorrow much better than today as the clock on the right side of my laptop now showed 4:06.

From a distance the roosters could still be heard, my bathroom door creaked, a dog barked...

and I know my prayer had been heard.

fighting bears

a ticker screen
with a green
which turned
into a
yellow
then a
red
in less
than 5 minutes
with cash
flowing
down the
drain
and
fear creeping
in
like a
thief
crawling
steadily
fast
its bag
full of everything
that i had
earned
for the
past 2
months
now wondering
where
did the
bull go
and why
did the
bear come
back
to clutch
its reigns
on me
on money
on fear

but like
everyone else
trading
stocks
i'd stay put
mind cleared
thoughts intact
hoping
that would
be enough
to fight
the bear
and turn
that
ticker screen
from a
red
to a
green

the stock market experience

I suck big time at Mathematics.

Seeing numbers was just like remembering that 78 grade I got from Algebra way back in high school. But after reading a few finance books and realizing that if I want to get a go at being a financially literate person, I would have to love numbers, or else, its good bye to my bank account and everything with it.

We attended a short seminar at a brokerage company called Citiseconline around 3 weeks ago. The trainer, the vice president of Citisec told us very clearly that day trading is a lot of risk. Bo Sanchez a famous preacher here in the Philippines also said to just leave the trading to the traders. But then again, since there's much a much bigger return at the riskier investment, we decided to give it a try.




The first stock we invested at was Petron. Good thing, there was a lot of hoopla regarding it being acquired by San Miguel. Thus, we decided to give it a try and buy stocks worth 20,000 for 14.70/share from Petron. For three days, we owned a part of Petron, and just when we felt it was right to do so, we parted with it at 16.20/share. I recall seeing the stock price go up. We would have made much more, but seeing that we made around 2000 bucks in just 2 days, it was a good investment, or probably as old people would usually say, just beginner's luck.

A week after, we computed possible earnings and decided to put our money at a company called Abacus. It showed potential with a yearly return of profit at 500 million. The stocks first traded at 0.85, we bought it at 0.90 per share. We made a mistake though, we forgot to check the holidays, and since the 24th and the 27th were both public holidays, our money stayed stagnant for 4 days. Awhile ago, the ticker screen (the screen that displays stock prices) was open once again. The 0.90 stock increased to 0.94 in just 10 minutes, then as quickly as it went up, the stock plummeted down to 0.86 before I could even press the "sell button". I was looking at the red on the screen and the numbers showing we lost 800 pesos already.




I was still keeping my fingers crossed, but I was looking glum. It was probably just beginner's luck. And just when I was about to text my fiancee to tell him we lost 800, the stocks changed from red to green. The 0.90 stock became 0.91 and closed at that price. Phew! That was one close call! I checked our portfolio and it showed we earned almost 200 pesos. Some would say it is too low, for me, I was just thankful we did not loose any money.

Now, after boring you with the long experience on trading at stocks, I realized some things. Hopefully, it would help some beginning day traders to know when to quit and when to keep on holding. (note: these were only based on what I observed)

1. When there's some news regarding a company and its good, people go into a buying frenzy. Watch that stock from the opening to the closing and observe if what I am saying is right. If people go into a buying frenzy, the stocks increase like crazy too. And so does your money, if you put it at that stock.

2. Know when to pull out - people loose thousands of pesos and even millions at the stock market because they get too greedy. Like me awhile ago, I was thinking the stock prices of Abacus would go up to 1 pesos per share.

3. In relation to number 1, if there is no news about the company after the buying frenzy, sell your stock fast (especially if the company is not listed at the top 30) it's better to have gained some, than too loose everything.

Oh and last but not the least, trading in stocks is like trading in real life. You may be in the red sometimes (like what happened to the people at Manila whose houses got burned by a fire last 24th) but everything is just temporary unless you want it to be. Companies change to green when they gain profit or are posting strong returns, so is life. You can only win, if you believe you can and if you try to evaluate yourself. Then you improve on your weak points and get on with life.

Awhile ago, I felt really bad seeing the red ticker screen on my Abacus stocks, but then I realized that everything is just temporary. Change comes more often. Sometimes things do not always turn out as planned but in the end, it's your next actions after the changes that matter most.

But tomorrow, I'd say goodbye to Abacus. And I do hope, it would be one good decision. Fingers crossed, ticker screen hopefully greener, the numbers much better.






And that's coming from someone who hates Mathematics. lol