WHY I CONTINUE TO INVEST IN THE US MARKET EVEN IN TIMES OF WAR | US STOCKS OVER PHILIPPINE STOCKS
Channel: ZIGGING by Mark Sigg
Date: 2022-03-06

Despite the onset of war and market volatility, I'm continuing to invest in US stocks and the US stock market. Through many videos now, I've been advocating investments in the global markets. I invest through US Equity Fundss via UITFs and Mutual Funds mainly through BPI, GCash, Seedbox Philippines, and ATRAM. While I also directly invest in the US stock market through Gotrade and EToro. Through the different channels I've advocated, I haven't gone much into the reason WHY I invest in the US stock market. And despite some unpredictability now because of the geopolitical conflicts between Russia, the Ukraine, the US, and possibly even the rest of the world, I am continuing to invest and place my bets in the US stock market. Why do I i do this and choose the US market over the Philippines? This is what we'll cover in this video. 


I've broken this down to 5 main reasons why I watch and invest more in the US stock market rather than the Philippine Stock Market. I understand that as Filipinos, we may feel quite disconnected and unfamiliar to the US market. More than the distance, the mature markets of the US and its inner workings as well as lack of understanding of their political and business landscapes may be intimidating. But the way I see it, the US market is not all that unfamiliar and if we're comfortable with the Philippine Stock Market, there's no reason for us to find the US market any more complicated than our local bourse. 

The first reason why I watch and invest the US stock market more than the Philippine Stock Market would be the higher upside of the former.  While stocks can be assessed in terms of their historical performance, business fundamentals, technical movements, and political issues in terms of landscape, at the end of the day, they are all highly volatile and never guaranteeing any assured predictability. Stocks and markets will always be a bet and for me, even as the US market would be more volatile, I'd rather bet on US companies because of their global reach and higher upside whereas most local companies in the Philippine stock market would be target only the local or regional market at best.

For the second reason, the US Market runs on more market data available to the public. Routinely, the US market is releasing economic data: inflation rates, unemployment rates, and housing market reports amongst others that greatly affect how the market moves. Moreso, companies are also closely watched in terms of their earnings report, closely scrutinised by analysts in the media. While the Philippines also has the same economic reports and company earnings reports, the level of detail and volume of that of the US are just on  a different scale. Locally, there are also very few news outlets that cover publicly traded companies. There are only a handful of official media coverage and just a rising number of amateur coverage here on YouTube such as myself. So locally, there's just much less coverage and expertise we can rely on whereas the developed market of the US just has much more that investors can go by in assessing their stock positions. 

Third, the US market has historically recovered much faster than the Philippine market even at the worst bear markets. Still fresh in our mind would be the recent crash of March 2020 when the Pandemic set in. It seemed like a bear market would be here to stay but the US market turned around without much hesitation. The Philippine market recovered as well but it was less instantaneous as that of the US. This has been how the US market has da behaved time and time again and it would be expected that we continue for this performance to be sustained. 

In relation to the third reason, the Philippine Stock Market will always take from the lead of the US Market as the US Market affects the global markets as a whole. Sure, the local market may fare well as we improve our own fundamentals. But we are still too small and the US is too big for our local market to be unaffected by the US market. No matter the state of our fundamentals, the US market will always eventually hold weight. 

Lastly, probably the biggest reason why I've spent more time in the US market would be in terms of ease and value in investing. Because of Gotrade and Etoro, investing in the US market is practically as cheap as you'd like it to be. Investments in Etoro start at $10 per stock while for Gotrade, it's just $1! This is made possible because of fractional shares. You no longger have to buy 1 whole share to be able to invest in a company in the US Market through these platforms! This is especially helpful for companies that are priced high such as Google, currentl trading over $2,600. In the Philippine market, fractional shares are still not a thing.


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