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A 31-YEAR-OLD Korean expatriate topped a virtual stock market
showdown for students from the master in business administration
programs of local universities and colleges all over the country.
Hyung Suk Lee of the Ateneo School of Business
posted a 21-percent gain for his P1-million “virtual investments”
to emerge on top of the Second PSE-CitisecOnline MBA Stock Market
Investment Challenge.
The tilt is being sponsored jointly by the
Philippine Stock Exchange (PSE) and CitisecOnline.com, Inc. (COL),
as part of their respective programs to encourage stock market
investments. The MBA showdown is a more advanced level of the
PSE’s Stock Trading Tournament (STT), which caters to
undergraduate students.
Lee’s gains contrasted with the 13-percent
average loss suffered by the market during the staging of the
tournament from November 19, 2007 to February 15, 2008.
Another Atenean, Ethel Sanchez, earned
second-place honors with an 11-percent increase in her virtual
investments; while Oliver Dwight Layug of De La Salle University
Graduate School of Business, placed third with a 4-percent gain.
Aside from Lee and Sanchez, one more Ateneo
graduate student made it to the top 10: Maria Francesca Mandap who
placed fourth in the tournament.
De La Salle University Graduate School of
Business had another winner, Aris de Leon who emerged fifth in the
standings. The other Metro Manila top placer was Ulysses Aguilos of
the University of the Philippines.
From the provinces, four graduate students made
it to the top 10: Mel Brian Nugeza of the University of San Jose-Recoletos
in Cebu (sixth place); Joel Lim of Xavier University in Cagayan
(seventh); Vergil Dematera of Ateneo de Naga (eighth); and Emmanuel
Floriann Magto also of Xavier University (10th).
For the achievement, Lee pocketed a trading
account from COL worth P25,000 plus the bragging right for beating
220 other MBA students from 12 schools all over the country. Raul
Ruiz, an Ateneo professor who acted as Hyung’s mentor for the
tournament, got a P10,000 trading account also from COL.
Lee works as an accountant in a manufacturing
facility in Mariveles, Bataan. A client of COL, he had at least one
year of actual trading experience in Seoul and Manila before he
joined the Second PSE-CitisecOnline MBA Investment Challenge.
The South Korean expat, who is a confessed beach
bum, has been in the Philippines for three years now. With a
full-time job from Monday to Saturday, Lee spent 30 minutes early in
the morning almost daily to trade stocks. He often browsed Bloomberg
links and the charts of each company whose stocks he intended to
trade. He intends to continue trading in our stock market.
Sanchez is a strategic planner at McCann World
Group.
The award ceremony was held at the PSE in Makati
with Francis Ed Lim, PSE president and chief executive officer, as
guest speaker.
“We in the PSE have pledged to work side by
side with other groups like CitisecOnline that share with the
Exchange a common desire to build a bigger capital base for the
Philippine capital market by conducting an intensified investor
education program,” Lim explained. As the tournament winners have
shown, we can still make the stock market work for you even when
challenges confront it,” he added.
COL president Dino Bate observed: “This
tournament has highlighted the fact that anyone can take advantage
of the opportunities in the stock market through the use of research
and analysis, and other online tools readily available to all
CitisecOnline customers.”
COL vice president Juanis Barredo observed that
this year’s batch of challengers had a more difficult financial
environment to deal with because the 60-trading-day period covered
by the MBA challenge occurred in the midst of global market
uncertainties triggered by worries about the US economy. “The
winners gave exemplary performances considering the relatively
volatile performance of the local stock market,” Barredo said.
CitisecOnline encourages all students nationwide
to learn about stock market investing and are holding free basic
stock market investing seminars every Tuesdays and Thursdays from 2
p.m. to 6 p.m. at the COL Training Center in Pasig. (For more
information on the seminar schedules, you can log on to
www.citiseconline.com or call 6-333-777.)
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