My Strategy for Market Volatility
2011 was an incredibly volatile year in the stock market. It seems like every day the indices move at least a percent. What’s a long-term, buy-and-hold investor to do? I have heard financial advisors suggest that you only check your portfolio balance once per year to prevent freaking out.
I used to check my IRA balance about once per month to record my progress. Now that I listen to APM’s Marketplace daily I always know what’s going on with the Dow, S&P, and NASDAQ and I’m definitely tempted to look at my accounts more often (though not tempted to change my buying/selling behavior).
My solution is to only check my investments when the markets have had a good day – when they’ve increased by 1.5% or more. That way I’m always happy with what I see (as long as I don’t look to hard at the previous balances)!
How do you handle the volatile market? What do you think of my optimistic strategy?
photo from OmirOnia
Filed under: psychology, stock market
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Great suggestion. people tend to make rash decisions on down days and you just need to remember that this is a long term portfolio.
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