Tips for not obsessively checking investments

winkowinko

Thanks for all your replies. It seems deleting the app from my phone, and trying to go from checking daily to weekly would be a good place to start. See how it goes, and then stretch the frequency of checking even further.

seacaitch

The danger of checking prices frequently is that it can really magnify stressful feelings when markets fall heavily, thereby increasing the likelihood of reacting emotionally to those falling prices...

Instead of earlier good intentions to remain resolutely focused on the long term and ignore volatility, these emotions can cause an investor's focus to shift to just the here and now, act impulsively and potentially trigger selling in order to stem the (paper) losses before they become worse.

People who don't think they'll ever do this can find themselves doing exactly this if conditions become sufficiently stressful, especially if they've not experienced these feelings before and become inured to them, or who don't have mechanisms in place to help maintain discipline despite the stress. Unless an investor has had life-changing sums of money invested throughout a sustained and major equity bear market, with declines of 40 or 50% or more, then they can't be sure how they will react to that pressure.

As you've recognised, a simple but very effective tool is to pay much less attention to the market: it's hard to react impulsively to something that you're not paying close attention to! Key is remaining interested, but at a healthy distance, taking the helicopter view - monitoring and periodically reviewing, while avoiding micro-observing that might trigger an emotional reaction in stressful times.

For the vast majority of people for whom investment markets are just a means to an end for financing long term savings, this is probably the way to approach things.

For a smaller number of people, sure of their discipline and who've demonstrated they won't react detrimentally to these stressful periods, they can use them to their advantage: if market stress is causing some other investors to trade impulsively and make distressed sales, that can distort prices creating buying opportunities for the cooler-headed.

Whatever your approach, it's important to recognise that being an investor involves (sometimes lengthy) phases of disappointment, and occasional high stress episodes, which must be endured in order to obtain the long term rewards. If it wasn't for these difficult and uncertain periods, and returns were instead delivered in a straight line like bank interest, then the risk premium would be absent and hence the returns would be much lower: enduring the volatility, however you manage to do it, is the "price of entry" for capturing these higher returns.

Linton

No problem about frequent checking of finances as long as you have the self discipline not to do anything about the results.

I can get a full valuation of all my investments with 2 or 3 mouse clicks and do so daily when I first log in. A bit like checking the weather forecast or reading the news headlines.

On-the-coast

I have an extremely risky s&s isa portfolio - which compliments my very safe dc and db pension funds. 

I do check it almost daily when it’s going up.  But when it’s going down I find it’s healthier to ignore it for a few weeks or even (gulp) a whole month!
By this approach I generally receive good news about my investments! 

Bostonerimus1

Definitely delete stock trading and investing apps from your phone, not only are they addictive they are a security risk. When you find yourself tempted to log on on a computer go and do something else. I would not be looking at your balances more than once a month.

redpete

Approx half my main pension fund is in income producing gilts, bond funds and money mkt funds. I use the income to help build a 5 yr gilt ladder from which I withdraw for income.  I buy the current gilt in the ladder once a month. I rebalance with the equity investments approx once a year.  So you might think I only check the values and cash once a month but it's actually a couple of times a week (am I kidding myself, it might be once a day?) but don't take any actions on these more frequent checks. Managing the finances is a hobby and I'm confident I will avoid temptation to deal in a volatile or constant changing market - so it doesn't bother me.  I don't get twitchy if I don't have online access for a week so I feel it's a 'safe' level of obsession.
Choosing not to have instant access on a phone does help.

Emmia

I look at mine whenever I fancy, but I think the key is being able to sit on your hands and not start withdrawing if you see it going down (crystallising your losses).  I can see my S&S ISAs on apps on my phone. One is in my main banking app (which I don't pay into or really look at) and the other (I pay into) is on a separate app.

I keep considering combining them and having a single S&S ISA but somehow in the list of life admin this has never really got to the top of the list.

Sometimes I look at the ISA I pay into daily, most of the time I leave it to do it's thing and check every so often... Perhaps only once every 3 months!

You'll probably find the novelty wears off after a while.

luci

I agree with other who say that the novelty should wear off and you will be checking less often.

I'm not the best person to comment on this, as our S&S ISAs are handled by an independent financial adviser. We've had them for years and I never check them. The only time I know how they are doing, is when we have our annual review with the IFA. They have always made gains, even during periods of volativity. Maybe not by much, but we haven't made losses.

I check our finances every couple of months and keep the details in a spreadsheet, so that I can see the total value of our assets. I have a small amount of very old shares in a couple of companies and they go up and down over that short period, but it doesn't bother me.