Internet enables Pinoy investors to profit from foreign exchange trading

Electronic trading through the internet has enabled Filipino investors, including those with modest capital, to trade successfully in the $1.2-billion global foreign exchange (FX) market, making good profits.

Local FX investors swapped success stories the other day at the Tower Club in Makati City during a symposium sponsored by the Singapore-based Performance Foreign Exchange Corp. (PFEC).

In a round-table discussion, importer George Tan, financial market player Benson Chua, businessman Joseph Tan, real estate developer Eddie Wong and investor Philip Go regaled the media with success stories cashing in on the exciting trillion-dollar FX trading worldwide.

"The potential to cash in on currency movements is greater than ever with internet forex trading through PFEC as trade now can be completed instantaneously," said Benson Chua.

The global trading in foreign exchange dwarfs by 27 times the daily turnover of stock trading in the New York Stock Exchange. In the Philippines, Fx trading amounts to more than $100 million daily, said PFEC officials.

"Definitely, global trading – foreign exchange no exception – has gone through its brick-and-mortar era when one has to physically go to a bank or a stock market and to other trading centers to trade," said Benson Chua. "With the advent of electronic banking and electronic everything, traders trade on-line at the click of a computer button, using the internet."

"This is very much unlike the tedious process of placing orders through broker banks that oftentimes leave clients hanging, their windows for realizing profit closing even before trades are consummated," said George Tan, who has been doing business with Performance for two-and-half years now.

Eddie Wong explained that retail foreign exchange trading is somehow analogous to the stock market except that the former is a 24-hour activity that only closes on weekends, if at all. And with PFEC allowing FX traders under its wings to trade margins instead of the actual value of trades, many more Filipinos can now engage in an economic activity once limited to big banks and financial institutions, he added.

Asked whether FX trading is comparable to straight banking, Philip Go said it’s a no-contest.

"With banks you earn what? Two percent? In FX trading, there is no limit on how much you can gain. It’s like to the stock market, but you buy forex through PFEC not on their face value but rather merely cover the potential differences or margins of the values of the two currencies you are trading," Go said.

All those interviewed declined to give a ballpark figure on how much they’ve earned since engaging in spot forex trading, but were one in saying that they have stayed long enough in the business to prove its soundness and potential.

"One thing is certain, you do not trade in foreign exchange using money that you are not willing to lose. The potential for profit is great, but there is a parallel risk of losing one’s investment. Thus, no life savings, no nest eggs should be used to trade FX," Benson stressed, to which the others nodded their heads in agreement.

But what has kept them in the game for so long, the group explained, were the professionalism, technological savvy and market acumen of the people behind PFEC.

"PFEC gives you all information you’ll ever need to make sound trade decisions. It provides you with the FX 2003 platform to trade through the internet, and it keeps you on top of things through SMS (text messages). It has market analysts who can guide you, if you have doubts," explained George Tan.