Stop checking your portfolio: the statistics and psychology behind explained

This will be a boiled down argument for why you should stop checking your portfolio hourly, daily and even weekly – and what intense portfolio-looking does to you.

1. The biggest and easiest to explain factor is glaringly obvious when explained and it comes down to statistics. If you expect 100% gains during a 1 year investment, it will not go up all the time during those 525.600 minutes of the year. At best, it will be up from the last minute, maybe 10.000 times more than it will be down. Say you check bitcoins price every minute 51/100 times it will be up (this is even generous). This is important, because og the theory in psychology that states losses cause more hurt than gains reward in terms of happiness.

But if you check daily instead of per minute, you might be up 200/365 days. That’s significantly up from 51/100. Now if you check monthly, you might be up 8/12 og 9/12 months (from the last month) assuming a 100% expected yearly return. (This is a high apy, but still applies to a low one, but let’s be real, if ur in bitcoin you expect high returnand volatility)

If you are a holder believing in bitcoin, you’re better off checking as few times as possible since variances in prices on daily candles are insignificant compared to the long term, and what you are seeing is the outcome of randomness. When you factor in the psychology of loss and gain, your mental will lose every time when checking often. By checking the price monthly or twice monthly, what you see is bitcoins actual price movement and not the result of daytraders random results.

1. Becoming too invested in your investment. Dedicating your time to checking your portfolio also takes time away from other productive things (or even just watching tv). If you’re not planning on changing your investment, there’s no reason to be checking it often since no matter how many times you do so, it’s still going to be the same price in 1 month as if you didn’t check. Spend that time watching tv instead, it’s better than wasting time watching random outswings in price.

2. Being down from your ATH is frustrating. By checking bitcoins price often, you make sure you will be seeing the price being DOWN from the ATH 99% of the time. If you check it less, chances are you still won’t be seeing the ATH.. but instead of being 15% down from ATH you shift your focus to being up 10% since you checked last month. This third reason could vary from person to person with it being insignificant to some people.

TL;DR: By checking your portfolio often, you’re just checking the results of daytraders random outcome. Checking less often gives you a clearer indication of bitcoins actual price moment.

Psychological principles say losses hurt more than wins gain – leaving your unconscious mood to be decided by daytraders is probably not in your interests when investing in bitcoin.

Check less often for higher chance of being up from when you last checked to be affected less by random, insignificant price actions. This applies if you’re a bitcoin bull in a bull market.