I know I have my gripes against YNAB, but after several months of using a different system, I do appreciate how YNAB prepares you for the unexpected with its virtual envelope budgeting.
I guess I have to start saving up for YNAB subscription.
Category: Investing
Japan will pay companies to move out of China
If Philippines plays its cards right, it could stand to benefit from this economic scheme when the pandemic is over.
GCash and CIMB, Are We Really Ready for Purely Digital Banking?
GCash and CIMB have been aggressively promoting their new digital banking platform they call GSave, with high interest rates (as high as 4% p.a.) to lure in GCash users, especially those they described as unbanked.
But are we Filipinos really ready for digital banking?
Not if there are still glitches in the service by GCash and CIMB. Last weekend, I needed to transfer funds from my GCash account to my bank account at once. I didn’t have have enough funds in my GCash account, thus I needed to withdraw funds from my GSave account. The debit to my CIMB GSave account pushed through, but the credit to my GCash didn’t.
That’s the big problem. People wants to keep some of their funds in regular Savings accounts to cover for their emergency or immediate needs. But if those funds are not available when they need them, it defeats their purpose.
So, to GCash and CIMB, if you want people to embrace this new digital banking revolution, you need to make sure the platform is ready.
BPI in a hurry to switch its clients to the new online and/or mobile platforms
I received an email from BPI today detailing how their old platforms, for mobile and online. will stop working by the following timelines:
| Current (old) Platforms | Current (old) platforms no longer accessible by |
| BPI Mobile app | December 1, 2018 |
| BPI Online Banking | January 11, 2019 |
The new platforms may have some more security features, that’s why? But why rush your clients when STILL, you can’t do investing transactions in the new platforms? Are they even aware of that? That there’s no way you can add to your Mutual Fund or UITF accounts using the new platforms? At least that’s STILL my observation when using the new BPI online platform.
COL Financial and Bank Charges
This is disappointing news for COL Financial subscribers/account holders. It appears that when you transfer funds to your COL Financial account via bank transfers, bank charges will now apply.
This is because transferring funds to COL Financial for your further stock transactions are treated like bills payment, thus the fee. And starting this year, COL Financial refused to subsidize them. See notice below:
COL Financial Bank Charges notice.
With the stiff competition in the stock brokerage business, I don’t think this is a good move by COL Financial. They better offer more value added services in order to stop account holders from moving elsewhere.
Philippine Banks Catching Up with Technology
Banks should be at the forefront of technology, especially in this internet age, delivering real-time data about their customers and their accounts.
The Philippine banks may not be as nimble in adapting the latest technologies in rendering their services as that of banks from other countries, but at least we know that the effort is there in trying to catch up.
Internet Banking
Disclaimer: I currently own Metrobank, BPI and Security Bank accounts, although I used to own PNB, BDO, EastWest and even Equitable-PCI (before their merger with BDO) bank accounts.
From my experience, the first to offer the most reliable (in terms of security, uptime, utility, and convenience) internet banking service was Metrobank. I have to admit, though, that BPI was able to catch up and in my own opinion (sans the downtimes that recently plagued their online banking) offer the best internet banking experience, especially when coupled with the convenience in managing your investment accounts via BPI Express Online.
Nickel Asia $NIKL reports higher volume but lower Peso revenue in 3Q-2015
Nickel Asia Corporation (PSE: NIKL, RIC: NIKL.PS, BBG: NIKL.PM) reports 12% increase in sales volume for the nine-month period ended September 30, 2015 on a year-on-year basis, but that peso revenue slumped by as much as 40% for that same period YOY. We’ve seen soft metal prices, particularly LME Nickel price and nickel ore prices, in the last year or so, thus a huge drop in NIKL’s and similar mining companies’ revenue.
I’m attaching the press release in full below, but the main points can be summarized in the graphs that follow:
NIKL-Total Volume September YOY 2015 vs. 2014
Apparently, I’m Not the Only One Losing Money
Bloomberg reports: World’s Richest Lose $182 Billion in Market Rout.
I’m far from this list of the World’s Richest, but heck, I lost a third of my wealth already!
The European Debt Crisis Explained
This Bloomberg video probably best explains how the European Debt Crisis happened, and what will likely more to happen in the near future:
https://youtu.be/j4_tyEl84IQ
Remembering the payphone, again!
As per Scott Fearon, CFA, on Bad Connection: What Today’s Investors Can Learn from the Death of the Pay Phone
Back in the late 1990s, I received a steady stream of research reports from prestigious Wall Street brokerages recommending the stocks of, you guessed it, publicly traded pay phone companies. There were four of them still in business at the time, and as the reports pointed out, they were all attractively “cheap” by traditional valuation measures, such as their price-to-earnings multiples or market capitalization-to-revenues ratios. Not only that, but recently enacted deregulation was allowing pay phone operators to boost the prices they could charge for local calls, leading to predictions of new “windfalls” on Wall Street and in the financial media. Of course, in hindsight, we can see that those forecasts were wildly off the mark and that there was a clear reason those stocks were such bargains: They were well on their way to oblivion. The widespread adoption of cellular phones had already started, and it wasn’t going to stop. But at the time, many investors dropped their coins into the slots of these classic value traps and never got them back.
This, of course, reminds me of my earlier post about the Payphone: Continue reading