Retirement can be nearly impossible for Filipinos who don’t proactively save and invest their money.  For this reason, BDO Securities is happy to offer a quality interface and powerful research reports to help you find the best stock market investments – helping you along the road to retirement.  No matter where you are in your retirement journey, BDO Securities can help.  Below are a few ways BDO Securities can help you invest for retirement, as well as some general retirement planning concepts.

How to save for retirement

Before we talk about how BDO Securities can help you save for retirement, we should talk about some basic retirement planning concepts.  If you’re not yet actively saving for retirement, it’s important to start as soon as possible.  The first concept is the amount of money that should be saved for retirement.

How much to save for retirement?

Of course, everyone has different financial situations and earns different amounts of money.  Because everyone has unique circumstances, it can be difficult to proclaim one saving rule for everyone.  While this is true, many financial professionals do believe people should be saving anywhere from 15% - 20% of income. 

First, your savings should go towards an emergency fund to cover expenses.  Once you have some savings, then it’s time to start investing.   If 15% is too much for you to invest each month, start with a smaller number.  Over time, try to increase the amount of money you save until you reach the 20% level. 

How to invest for retirement

Once you’re ready to invest for retirement, you should first think about the amount of risk you’re willing to take.  When it comes to investing through the Philippine Stock Exchange, risk can be defined as volatility.  Volatility is how much the prices of your stocks move up and down as well as the frequency of these price moves.  Stocks have more volatility than bonds and are considered riskier.  For this reason, people who want to take less risk include bonds in their portfolio. 

If you’re young, volatility shouldn’t matter as much as it does for someone who is nearing retirement.  Young investors should be completely fine holding the entirety of their investments in stocks with no investments in bonds.  However, if you’re older and nearing retirement, you may want to hold bonds in your investment portfolio as well as stocks.  Think about your risk appetite and how long you have until retirement, then decide the amount of your investments to hold in stocks.

Picking an investment strategy with BDO Securities

Once you decide how much you’re able to save each month and the amount of risk you’re willing to take, it’s time to decide the investment strategy to use with BDO Securities.  There are two main investment strategies when it comes to buying stocks on the Philippine Stock Exchange.  Some people prefer to trade stocks, holding them for short periods of time to make quick profits.  Others hold stocks for long-term periods of time for price appreciation. 

Short-term traders may hold stocks anywhere from one day to up to a month.  Long-term investors will hold stocks anywhere from many months to years.  Whether you’re a short-term trader or a long-term investor, BDO Securities can help you invest.

Short-term trading with BDO Securities

Trading stocks can be a profitable endeavor for investors.  With BDO Securities, the fees to trade stocks are low, coming in at 0.25% or P 20 (whichever number is higher).  On top of being a great brokerage interface for traders, BDO Securities also offers quality reports to help traders keep up to date with the market. 

Every day, BDO Securities publishes a report called Technically Speaking that highlights a stock from a trading perspective.  This report can be used to locate stocks to trade as well as entry and exit points.  Many traders take the profits they earn and reinvest them to hold larger positions.  This reinvestment of earnings can grow your investment portfolio as you continue towards retirement.

Long-term investing with BDO Securities

Another investment approach that can be used with BDO Securities is a long-term buy-and-hold investment strategy.  Investors can purchase stocks with BDO Securities and hold those stocks over a long period of time.  If you invest in stocks that grow, you can sell your stocks for profits in the future. 

Many long-term investors also practice peso cost averaging.  Peso cost averaging is a technique that averages the ebbs and flows of the stock market by purchasing stock on a recurring basis.  By adding the money to your brokerage account on the same date each month, you can better average stock market swings over a long period of time.

As was mentioned above, the fees to buy and sell stock with BDO Securities are minimal, coming in at 0.25% or P20 (whichever is larger).  Purchasing stocks with BDO Securities can help you create a portfolio of stocks while paying an attractive fee.

There are multiple BDO Securities reports that can help long-term investors.  One of those reports is the Weekly Wrap.  This report lists the BDO Securities analysts’ projected upsides and downsides of over forty stocks.  There is also the Stock of the Week report and coverage reports.  With so many quality reports, BDO Securities offers much information to help you find stocks to buy and sell.

Conclusion – Using BDO Securities to reach retirement

Saving enough money to one day retire takes time and patience.  You won’t start investing tomorrow and wake up next month ready to retire.  However, the earlier you start investing in the stock market, the better the chances you save enough to one day retire. 

When it comes to the amount of money investors should allocate towards investing, many financial experts agree that 15% - 20% of your income is a healthy rate.  Remember, before you invest this amount of money, you should first have an emergency fund in place. 

BDO Securities is a quality broker with an excellent interface to help investors buy and sell stocks.  With a low fee of 0.25% or P20 (whichever is higher) you can trade stocks for a low fee.  This is important as the less you spend in fees the more you retain for retirement.

Whether you are interested in trading stocks or practicing more of a buy-and-hold strategy, BDO Securities is a brokerage that helps you accomplish your goals.  Finding stocks to buy and sell is made easier thanks to BDO Securities' quality research.  By utilizing the various reports offered by BDO Securities, it’s possible to find stocks to trade and/or buy using a buy-and-hold strategy.

Whatever strategy you use and whatever amount you are able to invest each month, it’s important to start saving towards your retirement as soon as possible.  If you don’t yet have a BDO Securities account established, click below to open an account and get started.

Don’t have a BDO Securities account?

Click here to open a BDO Securities brokerage account in as little as 5 minutes!