6 Remedies of Obsessive Portfolio Monitoring
In the age of immediate gratification, I know I'm not alone in that I spend more than a healthy amount of time staring at screens. Many of my go-to apps reside under the Finance header on my phone, but the sad truth is most of the time I spend checking them is wasted. Day-to-day financial fluctuations have proven to be nothing more than noise and have no bearing on true, long-term investment outcomes. That's why the best financial plans are the ones left alone and monitored periodically, but certainly not daily.
Studies have shown that excessive portfolio monitoring can lead to ill-advised and emotional trading, which is likely to harm investment returns. Trading on emotion is bound to disturb your predetermined asset allocation, which by itself goes against basic principles of long-term investing. Trading also creates its own costs -- transaction and tax -- depending on the platform you're using and the types of securities you're trading. The simple act of opening an app on your phone increases the probability that you make a trade or a change, and significant research exists to show this should be avoided.
In an effort to help us get off the phone and back to our real lives, consider the following steps:
Source Fool.com
