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I have about 130k of my own money to invest, but anytime I put it in I worry so much and check the stocks at least every hour everyday! The problem is I'm a very tight person who likes to take risks if that makes sense. I just can't bring myself to invest and forget. Then if he market or a stock I was thinking of buying goes up a lot, I drive myself crazy over it. I stopped investing for a year because of this. Is anyone else like this and how do you cope?
You have to invest at a risk that you are willing to tolerate. Any money you invest should be money you don’t NEED for a period of years.
They make different funds built for lower risk tolerances. Adjust yours to what you can live with, and set it and forget it. You just have to trust that the people who built these instruments are true professionals who have been tested and tested. The same way you would trust a doctor working on you.
I’ve learned my lesson about micromanaging and interfering in what has proven to work. Know that your thoughts are based on emotion and fear, which has little place in strategic business decisions.
I have about 130k of my own money to invest, but anytime I put it in I worry so much and check the stocks at least every hour everyday! The problem is I'm a very tight person who likes to take risks if that makes sense. I just can't bring myself to invest and forget. Then if he market or a stock I was thinking of buying goes up a lot, I drive myself crazy over it. I stopped investing for a year because of this. Is anyone else like this and how do you cope?
When you stopped investing did you feel like you were missing something?
Though hourly-checking (or even daily) is a bit too obsessive and frantic even for me, yes, I do fret over short-term fluctuations excessively. It's human nature. Not only are our daily lives suffused with market-news (try turning on an evening news broadcast on the radio, without running into loops of the daily stock market report!), but it's entertaining, addictive and enthralling. Though I don't trade on information - good or bad - it's devilishly hard to avoid immersing oneself in the information-soup, especially if one works at a computer all day.
A more conservative asset-allocation doesn't help. Suppose that one goes 30/70 into stocks (the 70% being something else), as opposed to 100%. Theoretically, the daily fluctuations, and consequent nervousness, are 70% attenuated. But in practice, the emotional pangs remain. I have a stock that's maybe 1% of my total portfolio, and even so, every rise is a source of elation, and every fall a source of dejection.
On the other hand, I've not logged into my account since around November 2017 (I last did this on the 100th anniversary of the Bolshevik revolution - it felt ironically appropriate). So, by "checking the news" I mean Yahoo finance, or the daily market report on NPR, and not what actually happens to my account.
I have about 130k of my own money to invest, but anytime I put it in I worry so much and check the stocks at least every hour everyday! The problem is I'm a very tight person who likes to take risks if that makes sense. I just can't bring myself to invest and forget. Then if he market or a stock I was thinking of buying goes up a lot, I drive myself crazy over it. I stopped investing for a year because of this. Is anyone else like this and how do you cope?
Actually, I don't think this is necessarily unhealthy. If it's what you like to do, then I would just do it that way and enjoy it. I always know where my investments are. Keeping track of things is just the way I am.
It may help you to make a spread sheet of your individual stocks. Go back at least 3 years and at least 5 quarters and become intimately familiar with what is going on. Know when earnings are to be released and know what figures to look for.
I invest in very few stocks (NVTA & BEAT) and if you know more than I do about those companies, then you are very well informed. I intend to never sell until the reported numbers call for it.
In other words, I rarely "take profits". BEAT has doubled since I bought it, but no end is in sight to their growth, so no selling is planned. When I do sell, I will sell a little each year. Buy a car one year, maybe a vacation the next.
NVTA is a little different. It is not yet profitable so it gets checked constantly. If all goes well I will begin to sell in about 5 years.
I have about 130k of my own money to invest, but anytime I put it in I worry so much and check the stocks at least every hour everyday! The problem is I'm a very tight person who likes to take risks if that makes sense. I just can't bring myself to invest and forget. Then if he market or a stock I was thinking of buying goes up a lot, I drive myself crazy over it. I stopped investing for a year because of this. Is anyone else like this and how do you cope?
That won't help with the obsession. It might actually exacerbate it, because individual stock-quotes require some digging, whereas the S&P-500 is on the ticker at every television screen, billboard and airport waiting-lounge.
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