An interesting study.
http://finance.yahoo.com/focus-retireme ... ing_wealth
When Watching Your Investments Can Hurt You
Moderator: Global Moderator
Re: When Watching Your Investments Can Hurt You
Our brains are not really optimized for watching markets continuously. Our normal fight or flight instincts get pretty scrambled when placed in an artificial environment like a market with constant feedback that mostly consists of noise.
To think about a similar matter in a different setting, consider watching a tree grow. How silly would it be to sit in the woods day in and day out and watch the tree progress from sapling to small tree, to medium tree, to large tree. Imagine how stressful it would be watching the tree during high winds, during drought conditions, when beavers were working in the area, and every other peril that could harm the tree.
A better approach might be to plant four different types of trees in different locations and just sort of forget about the whole thing, only checking in once a year or so to see how the trees were doing relative to one another. Sometimes bad things would happen to one or more trees, and it might be necessary to plant new ones, but it would be highly unusual for something bad to happen to all four trees at the same time.
Over the course of decades, all four trees would tend to grow, some faster than others, and some with less drama than others, but all along the way you would be able to enjoy your life without being preoccupied with the trees' progress, and one day you would be able to look at your trees and enjoy the shade of each with a more or less relaxed approach to the whole thing.
To think about a similar matter in a different setting, consider watching a tree grow. How silly would it be to sit in the woods day in and day out and watch the tree progress from sapling to small tree, to medium tree, to large tree. Imagine how stressful it would be watching the tree during high winds, during drought conditions, when beavers were working in the area, and every other peril that could harm the tree.
A better approach might be to plant four different types of trees in different locations and just sort of forget about the whole thing, only checking in once a year or so to see how the trees were doing relative to one another. Sometimes bad things would happen to one or more trees, and it might be necessary to plant new ones, but it would be highly unusual for something bad to happen to all four trees at the same time.
Over the course of decades, all four trees would tend to grow, some faster than others, and some with less drama than others, but all along the way you would be able to enjoy your life without being preoccupied with the trees' progress, and one day you would be able to look at your trees and enjoy the shade of each with a more or less relaxed approach to the whole thing.
Q: “Do you have funny shaped balloons?”
A: “Not unless round is funny.”
A: “Not unless round is funny.”
Re: When Watching Your Investments Can Hurt You
Such a great example, MediumTex. Not watching the trees frees time that you could spend on other things--allowing you to even get enough resources together to plant lots more trees. And while you get to enjoy the shade, your kids and grand kids will get to enjoy the shade, too.