Your stock market app? Delete it

20 ส.ค. 2020

Outside of work and trading, I believe everyone should have a stock/asset investment portfolio working for them.

However, we all are swayed by what we hear and what we watch.

If you’re an investor, you’re probably guilty of doing something similar – waking up, checking Facebook who knows you’re an investor and gives you an article from CNBC saying that either

• The Stock Market is up
  [*}The Stock market is down
  

Either way, you check your portfolio. And on good days, you’re like, “So why didn’t Citi hire me?” However, on bad days you contemplate your decision to purchase said stock, and you think of all the cons in buying the stock. “Oh, they were overvalued, Goldman put a sell rating on it” etc. etc. However, the chances are that it is just your emotion getting to you.

People have been saying the NASDAQ is overvalued since its inception.
Goldman analysts had a sell target of $230 for Apple (It’s at $471 – maybe you can take the spot at Goldman after the analysts who made the recommendation get fired?)
I believe the whole point of owning assets is that it works for you. By looking at the returns daily, you get into this mindset that you’re working for your investments – getting stressed when it goes down, wondering whether to sell when it hits all-time highs. An excellent way to alleviate this issue? Delete the app. Remove the tickers off your Stocks app. You invest in the business, and the only time you should consider divesting in your assets is if the business changes from your original thesis. Here is a couple of reasons why you should “Delete the app.”


1. In the short run, the market is a voting machine. But in the long run, it is a weighing machine. – Benjamin Graham

In the short run, a stock price reacts to technical factors, news, and irrational behaviors by investors. Take the Coronavirus pandemic, for example – risk assets sold off, even tech equities. However, as seen by many of their Q2 earnings, they weren’t so effected at all. Comparing the pandemic to daily market moves is a stark contrast to what happens most of the time. However, it helps highlight the benefit of not having access to your portfolio’s returns daily – you’re not swayed by the change in the price daily. You should only be swayed by a change the original thesis you put on the business

2. Reduces your stress

This flows from the first point. By not being exposed to the green/red text, you can go on with your day without stressing whether your investment is a good one. Remember, time is your best friend. Time in the market is better than timing the market.

3. The most important – buy not looking at it every day, the assets work for you!

This last point (and this whole article) hinges that you invest in good businesses in the conventional sense and not wildly speculating on the stock price.

If we compare, for example, stocks to houses. It would be crazy to get your rental property valued every day So why should you do the same for stocks? If you believe in the company you invested in, you should have no problems letting it run along as normal. If you cannot comfortably let the investment sit and generate capital gains, you may want to re-evaluate

• The investment itself
  
• Your risk appetite
  
• Your time Horizon
  

With all that said, investing may be scary for many. And that’s not to say I am a perfect example either. Especially with my job, it is hard for me to ignore what is happening with my portfolio. However, I try my best to – and it starts with deleting the app.