Compare: Fees & Charges of Online Stockbrokers

(click to enlarge)

I saw a post (click here) in Pinoyexchange.com where a PEXer compared the charges of two online stockbrokers -- AB Capital and COL Financial.

So I thought, why not make a broader comparison of charges and fees of several online stockbrokers? The result: click the picture for its full size.

Benchmarking: Equity Mutual Funds and UITF

(source: Bloomberg)

When you are given a dozen eggs and inspect them closely, you will eventually see they are not of the same size (and sometimes shape) even though they came from the same poultry farm.

If you need a more human example: when you see a set of siblings, you will realize they are different from each other even though they came from the same mother and father.

Same with equity mutual funds and equity UITF, even though they are invested in the same stock market (same parent so to speak), the result of each fund differs from the others. You may compare them one by one... but you can also use just one "ruler" to measure all of them -- the Philippine Stock Exchange Index or PSEi.

Graphs after the jump.

What is your trading style?

I did not have a trading plan or style when I started investing in the stock market in January 2012. At the end of February, I was up 10%. Yey! Stocks that I was holding then were MEG, BPI, JFC, and SMPH.

Then in March, I learned Technical Analysis. I increased my capital and tried doing TA in so-so stocks (and yes, even basura). I thought I could do TA by just drawing lines here and there. Then boom, the market began correcting... the 10% I gained in two months started to be eaten up by the correction and yes, a few "technically analyzed" trades (of so-so and penny stocks).

I think the deepest loss was at 7%. This was my tuition to the world of stock market.

Why piso matters?

I currently have accounts in stocks and various mutual funds. And last January 2, the first banking day of 2013, I just started a Unit Investment Trust Fund (UITF) account with BPI.

That opening statements may send an impression that I have big funds. No. What I am doing is just preparing an allocation for certain goals. As of now, there are no specific goal for each fund.

Just one general goal: capital growth.

This quest for capital growth started in the first quarter of 2010 when I opened a mutual fund account with PhilEquity Fund, Inc.

But my interest in personal finance (I didn't know then that it was called as such) started when I was in second year college.

I applied and was accepted for a part-time job at one of the libraries in UP Diliman. It was my first experience in earning money from my own sweat (literal sweat as we had to move books from shelf to shelf).

It was also the start of my own "budgeting" exercise on my limited P2,000-monthly allowance and my P2,500-monthly income from that part-time stint.

I jotted down every cash inflow and outflow in a tiny notebook that looked like this:

(image after the jump.)