Be not impressed. I'm a small player--microscopic would be an understatement--in the local stock market. I've never traded right on the floor of the stock exchange or bought big blocks of stocks so enormous it needs a bank to underwrite the payment. As a matter of fact, because I bought so few shares they're probably not even in my name but is simply logged in the account of my broker R. Coyiuto Securities.
I'm just some back country yokel who had a few bucks to throw around and thought what consequential thing can one still buy with only P25,000 these days? I thought of an iPhone but quickly found out that iPhones in that budget range went out of production ten years ago.
Then all this cacophony broke out about ABS-CBN fighting for dear life before a moody franchise-renewing committee in Congress. Depressing news like that weighed down on ABS-CBN's shares like a millstone tied around its neck. So that inner voice of trading wisdom--I think its name is greed--began reminding me of the rules of thumb. Buy low, sell high. Catch the low on the way down, not on the rebound. If you see the bandwagon, it's too late. Be ready to jump the ambush but willing to hunker down the long wait during the ensuing hibernation. I mean, I was feeling it. I was imagining myself back in '84 surveying Steve Jobs' Apple shares at 25 cents and thinking I'm not biting the fruit that got that idiot Adam into trouble in the garden. I'm not buying into that scam. Of course, I would live to regret it, so I vowed never to make the same mistake.
My friends (whose status with me is currently under review) kept telling me the best stocks to buy are those that nobody wants. They even had a term for it--basura stocks ("garbage") and with ABS-CBN's fate in the toilet, it needed very little push to persuade someone like me who didn't have the pocketbook for blue chips anyway.
I snagged 1,600 shares for the bargain basement price of P15 apiece. As soon as I did, the end of the world came crashing down on me. Those shares tanked and sank deeper than the Titanic at P3.00 pesos per share, throwing me into the poorhouse even a lot quicker than overnight. But I thought it's not that bad. Not really. I'm only 57, I might be okay ten, maybe fifteen years down the line--who knows?
So I'm sure if I wrote something that sounds like I have the deepest empathy for ABS-CBN--which I do, sincerely, by the way--no one can accuse me it's inspired by the promise of the quickest of rewards.
First of all, I truly, truly don't care for any of that politics behind the rejection of ABS-CBN's franchise. Such as it is, Congress is the embodiment of the people, composed of representatives elected directly by a grassroots constituency. So if the congressmen's decision to reject democratized access to broadcast information at no cost for their constituents is reflective of the quality of their advocacy for their interests, then I think losing ABS-CBN is the least of the Filipino masses' problem at this point. They'd be surprised if they knew how much more they could lose for allowing tyranny like that to flourish in government.
In fact, even people in government--from Congress, Malacañang, the judiciary, the solicitor-general, even the NTC--may not even fully appreciate what many unheard and unrepresented sectors lost. And I'm not talking of lofty platitudes only like democracy, justice, freedom of expression, press freedom etc. I find much of that conversation corny myself. Any two people who engage in a dialogue about principles that could never be surrendered as those are bound to talk past each other anyway. So analyzing this issue from the political standpoint is an exercise in futility, really.
Instead, for the most selfish of reasons, I feel pity for my 87-year old mother for instance. Daytime TV is her only companion and watching ABS-CBN has an almost therapeutic effect to her state of morale. I can't tell any jokes funny enough to make her laugh as heartily as all that cheap slapstick on daytime soap could. I now that's a left-handed compliment and I don't care. It's beneficial to the kindest, gentlest, most loving mother in the whole universe for me, and yanking the station off the air is nothing short of abject cruelty. Now she sits on her rocking chair, a mute TV in the corner, looking out of the window--I think she's trying to watch reruns of her favorite shows in her imagination.
Now she's talking a lot about rejoining my sister in Winnipeg, except my sister had devastating news for her. "Mama, the Filipino channel here in Canada is gone, too." In fact, my sister reports, many Filipinos suddenly became cultural orphans disconnected from their true home, the Philippines. A lot of them don't even really watch what's on the Filipino channel they just like to have it on all day so they could hear people continually talking in Tagalog. This is especially true for those who lived alone. They'd teach their dogs to speak Tagalog if they could if it meant being able to hear something soothing to their ears, and calming to their yearning hearts.
Western evening news isn't as exciting or relevant to them as all that footage of traffic in EDSA, or flood calamities in central Visayas--and who's dating whom in Philippine showbiz, all happening halfway around the globe. If they leave home, eat dinner out or just amble along the busy shopping malls, they are engulfed in a foreign culture. Alienated at best, openly despised at worst by hostile Caucasian eyes they could almost read as saying Donald Trump's signature philosophy, "Go back to that shithole country you came from." It's shithole to Donald, it's home, sweet, home to them.
Those of us in the safe and familiar surroundings of true home that we take for granted can never understand. Alienation is not real to you, if you're not on alien soil. ABS-CBN's programming doesn't bring these kababayans home. It keeps them home. It makes them feel like they never left and that all the money they send back is just going over the fence and not really crossing international economic borders.
I don't really know if ABS-CBN can weather this present storm. At the rate it's molting its roster of celebrity staff I don't even now if they can retain enough crew to keep going. I know my small investment is probably never going to pay off in my lifetime. So I'll put it in my will and bequeath to my children. I hope some day they'll see me as Steve Jobs.
NOTE FROM JOEL: Hi, folks! Recently, I started a YouTube channel which is called "Parables and Reason" It is kind of similar to this blog content-wise. You can check out my channel by clicking the link below:
Joel R. Dizon - PARABLES AND REASON
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