COLUMN - It sounds like a harmless question. But how often you look can change how you experience your investments, even when nothing about the portfolio itself has changed.
Research using US market data from 1950 to 2024 shows that 44% of trading days close lower. In other words, if you check your portfolio every day, you should expect to feel disappointed almost half the time.
Not because anything is wrong. Not because your plan has failed. Simply because markets move around.
Stretch the time horizon and the picture changes considerably. Monthly periods were negative 36% of the time, one-year periods were negative 19% of the time, and no 10-year period in the sample was negative.
The portfolio is the same. The investor's experience of it is not.
A long-term portfolio is designed to work over years and decades. But the moment you open an app and look at today's value, you turn it into a daily scoreboard. And daily scoreboards are emotionally exhausting.
Daniel Kahneman's research helps explain why. Losses hurt more than equivalent gains feel good. So the more often you check, the more often you expose yourself to that sting, even when nothing fundamental has changed.
I've had this conversation with clients before. Once invested, they sometimes ask how they can check their portfolio. I tell them they can log in, but then say I'd prefer they don't.
This is usually followed by an awkward chuckle. Then silence.
I understand why that can be disconcerting. But I would rather say it upfront. If you keep checking, losses are going to hurt more than gains feel good. Eventually, it can affect your behaviour.
You start wanting to make a change, not because your life changed, not because the plan changed, but because the market moved. That is the danger.
Good long-term plans get abandoned at exactly the wrong moment, not because the plan was wrong, but because the daily experience of watching it became too uncomfortable to bear.
This is especially true in retirement. When you are drawing an income from your portfolio, every fall can feel personal. Every bad month can feel like a threat to your future income. But a proper retirement portfolio is not built around today's market level. It is built around a plan.
The discipline required is not willpower. Willpower is unreliable. The better answer is structure.
Set a review cadence. Reduce the noise. Delete the app if you find yourself checking too often. And when you do look, ask a better question.
Not: "How is my portfolio doing today?"
But: "Am I still on track?"
One invites emotion. The other invites planning.
The goal is not to feel good every day. The goal is to give a sensible long-term plan enough time to work.
Matthew Matthee has a wealth management business that specialises in retirement planning and investments. He writes about financial markets, investments, and investor psychology. He holds a Masters Degree in Economics from Stellenbosch University and a Post Graduate Diploma in Financial Planning from UFS. [email protected]
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