This is the third installment on the discussion about basic principles in stock market investing. In the previous articles, we discussed about the first three principles of investment. First, the stock market is just another vehicle of investment. Secondly, investing in the stock market is a roller coaster ride and thirdly, you must determine what type of investor you are. We continue with the next 4 principles in part 3 of this 4 part series. If you wish to view the entire article, please visit my blog.

4.) While investing in the stock market does not take a lot of cash however having lots of it will obviously have an impact on how much you earn. – It is true that you don’t need hundreds of thousands of pesos or millions to invest in the Philippine Stock market. For me personally you only need about P 20,000.00 to start trading. This was the initial amount I began with. You don’t exactly need P 20,000.00, you can even start trading if you have P 10,000.00. But personally, I believe that is too small an amount. To show you what I mean let me cite Jollibee (JFC), one of my favorite stocks as an example. Jollibee shares cost only 51.50 per share as of today. In order to invest in a stock you need to purchase a minimum number of shares which is called the board lot. The board lot for Jollibee is 100. If you do the math you will only need P 5,150.00 (51.50 x 100) to be a stock holder of Jollibee Food Corporation. Let us presume that a year after you purchased the stock it climbed to P 100.00 per share. This means that you have gained P 5,000.00 more. However if you had invested 200 shares you could have gained much more.

5.) Be consistent in your investment – Start small but do not stay small. You must have the discipline to consistently invest a certain amount of your income to the stock market. This way you can have more capital thereby growing your portfolio. Over the years, I have slowly added to my investment. I did not stay at P 20,000.00. The act of investing should become your habit, and I say it is a good habit to develop.

6.) Minimize your losses, Maximize your profits – The loss is only on paper if your stock goes down. The actual loss occurs when you sell your stock at the “losing” price. The best thing to do therefore is to never ever sell at a loss. This is the reason why it is very important that the money that you invest in the stock market is considered as surplus money, not your emergency fund. If you invest your savings or emergency fund, you will be forced to withdraw sell your stock at a loss if you desperately need the money. To maximize your profit you must utilize profits you gained from the sales of stocks and the dividends you receive to buy more shares of stocks.

7.) The stock market is not a get rich quick scheme – In all investments always take note of the principle that money takes time to grow. Those Investments that give you very high rate of return in a very short period of time are most likely investments that make other people rich, not you. Most likely it will take several months or even years in order for you to really profit in the stock market, especially in the Philippine stock market. There are times that it will just take weeks or days to really make a killing. However these are rare occasions. This usually occurs in cases like when there is a consistent bull run or that there is an unusual drop or climb of prices in a short length of time for various reasons.

Would you like to know more about investment strategies ? Visit the blog of Zigfred Diaz where he blogs about several interesting topics such as investments, money management, business, making money online and Stock market investing