How regular do you "keep on top of" your investments?

Nine_Lives

They say investing is for the long term, so switching around like you're playing fantasy football would be a bit silly i'd dare say.

So on that note - how regular do you check on things to see how they're doing out of curiosity.

Note: If checking is your job, then i'm not really asking you. This is for those totally managing everything themselves. No IFA, no nothing.

Shimrod

Individual shares - daily as they will be more sensitive to news flow and company statements etc.
Funds - monthly as they tend to be less volatile

hugheskevi

I update values (along with S+S ISAs) at the end of each month.

I used to do it daily, but stopped that mostly as I moved to more sophisticated monitoring to break down entire portfolio by areas/specific investments and balance it across my own and my partner's portfolios, which was much better but more time consuming to update. I also prefer to distance myself a bit, as daily movements are just noise (I only invest in fund or trackers, no single shares at the moment) so there really isn't any benefit from daily updates and they can taint decision making.

I usuallly make a single annual pension contribution toward the end of the tax year, and at the same time rebalance/rejig my investments. I might also tweak a bit midyear (ie only 1 or 2 changes per year), depending on how I feel and the extent to which different investments have got out of alignment compared to the initial plan.

somethingcorporate

Check daily, make changes monthly on S&S ISAs. Check monthly make changes once a year (if at all) on pension.

gadgetmind

I check daily as it's really just a matter of looking at the key indexes. I don't do this because I'm looking to sell or switch but because I'm looking for bargains.

Major rejigs are once per year, with the real action being during April when we both get new CGT allowances and new ISA subscriptions. I've usually got everything planned well before April and I'm pretty methodical and have checklists and template letters at the ready. but while I tend to fully fund our ISAs early on, I stage/time the purchases, and the same applies to our unwrapped investments.

These are the hard bits. Rebalancing of monies already invested simply involves me putting current values into a spreadsheet, deciding if I want to tweak my asset/territory allocations, and then putting in the trades. This is the easy bit and only takes an hour or so. IFAs that take 0.5% trail commission for doing this are extracting the urine IMO.

fairleads

K_P83 wrote: »

They say investing is for the long term, so switching around like you're playing fantasy football would be a bit silly i'd dare say.

So on that note - how regular do you check on things to see how they're doing out of curiosity.

Note: If checking is your job, then i'm not really asking you. This is for those totally managing everything themselves. No IFA, no nothing.

I note daily values of $, £, Euro and Rand, and Fridays closing prices of all our investments incl cash. Update the info into a chart based spreadsheet once a week. Half an hour tops, per week. As to rebalancing the portfolio, maybe twice per yr tops. I'm retired for 11 yrs

sheslookinhot

What is meant by "rebalancing" your portfolio ?

Surely when the funds were originally purchased they would be over a few areas, then funds added at a later date would be in other areas not currently within a portfolio ?

Derivative

I check my own investments roughly daily to update my 'net worth' spreadsheet.
Rebalancing isn't really an issue for me currently as the invested amount is low compared to my income, so I just buy in the right proportions.

atush

I used to check daily, then look in depth monthly. but I don't so much any more. More weekly for shares and funds monthly.

I look at exchange rates daily, and read news daily so I know if any news that means I should check things more closely. I haven't had a problem with this approach, but I have had a problem that we seem to have major market moves when I am in france for 2 weeks or so in summer (w/o internet) in August (like this year and others) which means even when i looked daily before that i was caught out as by the time radio 5 live tells me on a sat am I can't do anything abt it lol. But I am never a panic seller anyway so i probably missed more buys than sells really.

gadgetmind

sheslookinhot wrote: »

What is meant by "rebalancing" your portfolio ?

Surely when the funds were originally purchased they would be over a few areas, then funds added at a later date would be in other areas not currently within a portfolio ?

If you're continuing to feed into the portfolio, you can (usually) rebalance with what you buy, but otherwise you have to do some buying and selling.

The idea is to (roughly) maintain your target asset.territory allocation, which usually involves a move away from into equities and into bonds as you get older.

Derivative

sheslookinhot wrote: »

What is meant by "rebalancing" your portfolio ?

Surely when the funds were originally purchased they would be over a few areas, then funds added at a later date would be in other areas not currently within a portfolio ?

Contrived example:

Portfolio 50% equity, 50% bonds

5 years later with no further investment, due to movements

Portfolio 70% equity, 30% bonds

To 'rebalance', if you're still looking for a 50/50 split, either you'd buy bonds with new money or sell equities to buy bonds.

The theory is that in doing so, you're selling 'overpriced' assets and buy 'underpriced' assets.