Scenario:Philippines, small capital, beginner, stock investment, fund investment...???

What to do to invest stock. where does one usually go to. whom can one approach, stockbrokers? where?
or better yet, can one just invest funds in banks and let bank act as the trustee for the fund?

I tried Mutual funds like the one offered by Sun-Life, Philam and first Metro (they have sales charge though). I also tried UITF (Unit investment trust funds) w/ banks like BPI, Banco de Oro, etc. I think these are safer ways of investing rather doing it yourself. Yields are higher than time deposits and other traditional trust funds. The most conservative may give you yield that can traslate to 10-12% p.a. The high risk ones can sometimes translate to as high as 45% p.a.

same as anywhere in the world, you have small sum of saving, you find a banker, investment consultant or fund manager to manage your fund, hopefully it grows, or worst totally disappear.

I grew up in Philippines, have sisters and in-laws that works in bank, and investment house.

Stock market lately are laggard, you can check daily quotes [not real time] through web sites.

Funds, there are few but slow growth, unlike the Japan, Russian or middle east funds that grew triple digit last year, Philippines has been lagard due to political instability.

Money market, one possible choice, your money is used by investment house, banks or funds for short terms loan to businesses, interest rate is higher than the bank, check with local bankers whats their rates, can be somewhere between 12% to 20%.

Banks, time deposit terms are longer.

Check around a little more by shopping around, investment consultant tend to talks a lot and you can find out a lot by talking to more people.

I suggest you to open a brokerage acccount in scottrade.com with just $500 to invest in Exchange Traded Funds.

If you have less than $500 or more than $1000 drop me a line.