some sunday sharing

You know it is rare nowadays to have mail men delivering letters and parcel since the advent of email and text messaging, most specially on a Sunday. But I got a pleasant surprise yesterday. Midmorning, a delivery guy handed in a fat envelope. “Stocks galing sa Meralco,” the man said matter of factly. I opened the envelope as if it was a present during Christmas time, and behold Meralco gave out 10 percent stock dividend.”

Nice one. Afterall, it has been a while since Meralco gave out something either as stock or cash dividend to their shareholders. My Meralco shares are special. Afterall, it was my first major investment. And from a young college student who took the leap of faith, the business funding was not something to sneeze at. I had no idea how the whole stockmarket worked then. Although at that time, I stumbled upon heaps of paper of shareholding from the mining sector inside the supposed fire proof vault. And when I asked about them from my Dad, “They’re now worthless,” was the stern reply.

But still I was intrigued with what I always read at the Business Section of newspapers. All those digits, and all those big businesses. So when Meralco called on people to invest, I made the telephone call only to find out that I could only have Meralco A shares. The pricier B shares were reserved for foreign investors. My mind could only fathom – “that’s discrimination!” In any case, I still bought at IPO (initial price offering) rate.

And I found out that particular time was already the beginnings of a boom run. Weeks later, values of shares rose very significantly on a daily basis. From an initial value of around thirty bucks per share, Meralco A shares steadily went threefold. With a very rosy financial picture, the lure was to get some more shares, particularly from coming IPOs as the values were cheaper. And with some financial helping from Dad, I chose supposedly good ones – even the much anticipated Petron shares. The market was so good that one analyst had this tongue in cheek advice: Get a dart, and position a newspaper clipping of all participating corporations in the Philippine Stock Exchange as your dartboard. Where the dart landed, try investing on it.

The market fever was contagious. I would regularly send messages to my Dad thru his pager (no, text messaging yet) about the news of the meteoric rise of shares. I had a girlfriend, cousin, aunts and uncles buy shares from my friend Andoy. My classmate Hansel and I would even meet him at open parking lot at UP Phan even during the evenings after he got off at work from Makati Stock Exchange just to buy and sell shares. The whole scenario looked sinister, having to talk about the stock market inside an auto, while exchanging money and stock certificates. The look was very Mafioso as if we were trading shabu.

I even had a special trip going to the old Makati Stock Exchange Building. I brought along my cousin Paulo to meet up with Andoy. We bought some Steniel shares, as we knew that the company was giving out fifty percent stock dividend. The visitors’ lounge was stuffy because of the number of people who went their to ogle at numbers at the Big Board. With pens and some scratch paper in tow, people religiously computed wins and losses. Apparently, they never go to advise us two that the Steniel stocks were lemons. After the dividend, prices plummeted. And we just had to sell the shares at a loss.

And that was the start of loss of many other investments. Earlier the economy had been running fever pitch, then all of a sudden the market came down with flu in the entire Asian region, including the Philippines. Interesting metaphors – after the fever, a flu.

The Phisix shares had a steady decline. And it was painful to monitor how the prices went down. But still I held on to numerous sets of shares – mostly from the power sector, hoping things will improve on a long term basis. And since the start of this year, the market has slowly recovered; in fact Phisix has already had its all time high this year. And with this ten percent share surprise blessing, this stocks and shares business promises to be another monster hit.