I have this bad habit of watching stock prices on NSE site, Moneycontrol and rediff and also tickers on business channels. Therefore even if I dont want to check prices of my portfolio stocks I get to see them if not daily than on a weekly basis at least.This is bad habit and can work against long term holding strategy as I am sometimes tempted to sell winners. How can I avoid looking at prices so often? Or in this age of information overdose its not possible. Mind you I am in front of laptop in office all the time so I have access to internet all the time…
One way is to block the sites you use to watch … http://gadgets.ndtv.com/internet/features/how-to-block-any-website-on-your-computer-phone-or-network-588357
Or you can use apps like StayFocussed, which helps in blocking sites for a set period of time.
At the end of the day, it is a question of personal discipline. Tools and techniques will help you but if you really want, you will find a way of getting the stock price.
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Excellent thread to have. Ditto with me.
In a way, i have come to explain this behavior as a resultant of certain amount of fear that we have:
- Missing out on temporary deep-dips that could provide nice buying opportunity
- Staying out of context with the latest know-hows about the companies we are interested in.
And there are some good avenues to avoid this:
- ICICI Demat accounts allow free of cost alerts for watchlists of companies that you track. You can set a watchlisr when Company A hits price of Rs 100 and you will get an SMS as soon as this event happens. You can also use paid service from Moneycontrol
- Use Screener and Bsealerts for getting to know the Disclosures made by the company to the Stock exchanges.
If the above are your worries as well, then you may attain peace with the solutions.
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Isn’t their value in watching the price action? Doesn’t that give information?
I check prices multiple times daily, that by itself is never a problem. The issue is when checking prices leads you to consider doing something that wasn’t part of your plan in the first place. Hence, redefine the problem to say “how do I stop myself from doing something that does not fit into my strategy?”, the trigger to act could be anything - meeting someone who has a counter view, a market correction, sudden volatility in the stock price, new information that you aren’t able to fit into your existing model etc
I find a lot of value in checking prices regularly, that’s how I build my intuition/feel for how a stock moves. Also ensures I discover new information continuously than in batches. I also find the “buy a stock and check prices once in 6 months” advice very idealistic and utopian. When something goes wrong I’d rather know that sooner than later.
In short have your exit criteria handy whenever you make any investment, that way you know what to react to. Also revisit your hypothesis once in 3 months once the quarterly results are out
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You can always get away from all this information by going back to stone age i.e. blocking sites, going offline etc. But why not use this technology to your advantage and try to derive some value out of it?
First ask yourself why you check prices multiple times a day? I used to check prices especially at opening bell to see if any of my stock have tanked or hit the lower circuit. I couldn’t really do anything at that point but underlying this behavior was the fear that I might have bought some junk stocks that I was worried could blow up one day. Over time I managed to improve my quality quotient and I no longer worry about my stocks hitting lower circuit.
I do check prices multiple times per day only to get an idea if my portfolio is outperforming my benchmark. I don’t care if the market is up or down. I regularly tweak my strategies and only way to test the change is to observe its effect on portfolio alpha daily. Otherwise, it can take years to figure out what works and what not. My trading terminal allows me quickly sort my holdings based on weight, % change MTM change etc. I use the information to see what effect does a macro event has on my portfolio. e.g. just today all interest rate sensitive stocks are up in anticipation of a rate cut tomorrow.
I also have several watch lists and model portfolios that represent various investment strategies (concentration, diversification, value, growth etc). My trading terminal lets me compare the performance of these model portfolios in real time. I draw some invaluable sights like effect of market events on these strategies etc.
Additionally, I use charts, performance of a company relative to an index, peers etc as a compliment to all other fundamental analysis. Statistic like up-down ratio, moving averages etc help me understand if sentiments are driving the markets or fundamentals. I actually use my trading terminal after market hours rather than during.
Point is, try to get some mileage out of technology instead of getting away from it.
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One of the best things I did is to set up alerts at the prices I’m interested in catching. I figured there was no value added by checking things every minute/hour/day unless I was going to take some action on it.
I understand that it can be a psychological impulse but I didn’t want to waste my time just looking at a screen forever. I realized that the prices of my stock holdings don’t go up or down just because I stare at them 
what do you use for alerts - any apps recommended?
one way is to delete all invested scripts from the trackers. adding the scripts is pain, time consuming.
but this has worked for me not more than a week for me 
…better than dialy monitoring 2-3 times a day
Most of the people have access to their Broker portal directly. So, deleting scripts from Tracker won’t help for them.
well …i used google finance to track, so one needs to check what works for them