How did I started with Stock Trading/Investing

As I had discovered the National Library located in Kalaw Maynila, in it I also learned that it also has a Filipiniana section. A Filipiniana section holds books that are authored by Filipino writers. There were also memorabilia items from a Filipino history which you can see. If I remembered it correctly, way back, the National Library of the Philippines were using a Dewey Decimal classification type of system. In order for you to be able to borrow a book of your choosing, you have to search into their computer what kind of book you'll need and write it down on the piece of paper which you can get near the librarian. You have to write the title of the book, author and the code. A tip that I eventually formulated is that I would borrow a certain book like, for example, related to self-development and from there I would find the book I had chosen while looking into the books that I could also borrow. I'll write it down and then borrow it later as you can only borrow a limited number of books. In this way, I've discovered Francisco Colayco's Pera Mo, Palaguin Mo. Their reading area were comfortable enough that I was able to finish the book. This is the first book that got me into personal finance. I would really like to buy this book at that time but I can't because it was expensive for a student like me to shell out a 500+php book. Later, I did.

Personal finance piqued my interest for a while that I began to gobbled books just to quench my thirst for additional knowledge. Colayco's books were more on investing on real estate which at that time was not really that realistic as I was still a student. However, it imparted that before you do investing, you should have an emergency fund first. 

Because I had already seen all the books related to personal finance in the library, I turned to the internet where I was introduced to stock investing. At that time, there weren't any available resources like we have today. I thought that the stock market was a high risk type of investment and I was keen on focusing first on savings and building my emergency fund. Also, one of the reasons is that I was discouraged to try out the stock market was that, it wasn't as accessible before as it is right now. Before, you have to go to the Philippine Stock Exchange and have to personally process the necessary papers for you to be in the stock market which at my part was a tedious and a hassle. So I didn't pursued it.

Many years forward, my sister was insisting that we attend the COL Financial seminar so we could start the stock market investing. It took her a lot of times (a lot of nagging included) before I was able to attend one. After the seminar, we filled out the forms and e-mailed later what we lacked and started investing. For those who do not know, COL Financial is an online platform for the Philippine stock market where you could purchase stocks even at the convenience of your own home. Their minimum amount just so you can start is 5000 php which was definitely okay as even mutual funds in Sun life starts like this in amount.

It was nerve-wracking at first especially when you see the stocks you bought are in the red color. This color means that you are in the negative, a potential to lose money. Actually, you could lose real money if you decided to withdraw your money. But I constantly remind myself that I'm in it for the long haul and I am still learning through reading more books and through experience. I'm in it for the long term as I plan for it to be my retirement income. I realized that what I do in this recent years is stock trading. I've netted some profits and learn to hold stocks which are worth holding out.