How often do you check stock prices?

[Liberty]

I'm surprised at how many people check it more than once a day. I try and look at it once every couple of weeks. I keep up with the news/press releases of my holdings religiously though.

long term buy & hold isn't the only viable strategy.

 

It also depends how much time you spend on investing-related things. If I spent a couple hours a month on investing, I'd probably never check stock prices. But currently I spend tens of hours per week on it, so that makes it harder to resist temptation.

[Read the Footnotes]

I'm surprised at how many people check it more than once a day. I try and look at it once every couple of weeks.

I would like to suggest that this poll may display self-selection bias. Those who check prices once per day or less than once per day likely show too much self-control to read CoB&F on a daily basis, and are therefore less likely to have had a chance to read or respond to this poll. Those with so much self-control they check their prices less than once a month are more likely to read this tread long after it's dead and are therefore less likely to ever respond.

[Guest moneystockholder]

I'm surprised at how many people check it more than once a day. I try and look at it once every couple of weeks.

I would like to suggest that this poll may display self-selection bias. Those who check prices once per day or less than once per day likely show too much self-control to read CoB&F on a daily basis, and are therefore less likely to have had a chance to read or respond to this poll. Those with so much self-control they check their prices less than once a month are more likely to read this tread long after it's dead and are therefore less likely to ever respond.

 

Might I also add that checking an investing thread where people discuss the fundamentals of a business or the news surrounding it is not synonymous with checking the stock price. One can still check the news on a daily basis but not get a quote on their holdings nearly as frequently.

[Read the Footnotes]

I'm surprised at how many people check it more than once a day. I try and look at it once every couple of weeks.

I would like to suggest that this poll may display self-selection bias. Those who check prices once per day or less than once per day likely show too much self-control to read CoB&F on a daily basis, and are therefore less likely to have had a chance to read or respond to this poll. Those with so much self-control they check their prices less than once a month are more likely to read this tread long after it's dead and are therefore less likely to ever respond.

 

Might I also add that checking an investing thread where people discuss the fundamentals of a business or the news surrounding it is not synonymous with checking the stock price. One can still check the news on a daily basis but not get a quote on their holdings nearly as frequently.

 

Point well taken. The correlations between internet usage patterns, price checking and news checking are all up for debate. I probably fall in the checking prices once a day, but checking news much more frequently camp and it took me around 20 hours to find this thread. So there's all of one data point on that subject.

 

I should probably clarify that I was primarily joking in my post. I was enjoying the chance to intentionally create an overly analytical response a post that I found both fun and informative. Thanks for getting the discussion started jawn619.

 

 

[oddballstocks]

I'm surprised at how many people check it more than once a day. I try and look at it once every couple of weeks.

I would like to suggest that this poll may display self-selection bias. Those who check prices once per day or less than once per day likely show too much self-control to read CoB&F on a daily basis, and are therefore less likely to have had a chance to read or respond to this poll. Those with so much self-control they check their prices less than once a month are more likely to read this tread long after it's dead and are therefore less likely to ever respond.

 

Maybe that's a better poll?  "How many times do you mindlessly refresh CoBF?"

 

Or another:  "Do you prefer topics that are entertaining and generate pages of conversation with little investment relevancy, or do you prefer topics that receive two responses before the investment idea triples?"

[Pelagic]

Just because someone checks stock prices frequently doesn't mean they take action because of it. Perhaps my favorite excerpt from Buffett's annual letter is an analogy of Mr. Market as a friendly neighbor who meets you at your shared fence to let you know what he's willing to buy your farm for that day. I think of stock prices like that, for the most part the underlying business hasn't changed much yet over the course of a day, week or month changes can incrementally add or erase billions in value. Yesterday, global equities lost about $1.5 trillion in value, yet our "farm" seems no worse off than it was the day before, save perhaps that little part of yonder in Southern Europe. Personally I'll keep checking stock prices because it's fascinating and a reminder of just how irrational markets can be sometimes.

[KinAlberta]

For a couple mutual fund holdings, I pretty much never ever check the price and rarely even take note of gains/losses on my statements. For holdings like BRK, and some ETFs, I'll maybe check the price once every few months. Holdings like FFH maybe once a month if that. 

 

Then some more numerous but very small, usually microcap, positions I'll just monitor for large percentage price movements*. If something fairly dramatic happens to move some small position significantly, then I'll watch it frequently, likely daily, if it starts to move up in price dramatically as I try to "time the market"/"sell at the top"/"average down" and exit or take enough profits to cover my costs. (On average, this last approach hasn't worked very well for me for the last decade or more - as I've bought too many lottery ticket like companies, held losers and sold too many stocks that later became 10-20 baggers.  Essentially, I've "picked the flowers and kept the weeds" as Peter Lynch used to call it). 

 

*I have several Google Finance portfolios set up that I use as watch lists (a long list of misc. stocks, closed-end funds, ETFs, compounders, lottery tickets, etc.).  These watch lists can easily be sorted by percentage change so I'll click on %+/- to see the big movers for any particular day.  So it's very rare for any large company to show the big percentage price movements and so they get ignored. The little, mostly doomed to fail or stagnate, companies regularly bounce around quite dramatically percentage wise.  They add excitement to my day but little to my portfolio.

 

[Pelagic]

Here's Seth Klarman's take on checking stock prices. The relevant discussion starts at 7:51   

 

Klarman: "I don't have a Bloomberg on my desk, I don't care"

[Dog Hill]

over the last month, I have forced myself not to check portfolio prices during the week. this has previously been a guilty pleasure (I would check after the close each day and often multiple times during the day), and one that I wanted to wean myself off for a while, but I had not been strict about it, and the habit of checking was too strong.

 

there is a nice discussion of the negative effects of overchecking in fooled by randomness, where Taleb makes the following 2 points (neither of which will be a surprise to most people, but which link together nicely)

(1) the vast majority of short term stock price moves are noise

(2) the negative emotion caused by a $100 loss is greater than the positive emotion caused by a $100 gain

 

I am new to the stock market, and am only slowly moving from passive index investing to individual securities as I learn more and become more comfortable, but I wanted to build this habit early.

I have an account with Schwab, and there is an option on the login page that allows you to open your page on the "trading" screen, rather than the accounts summary, which allows you to open a new trade without seeing the performance of your existing portfolio. I have found this useful, as I was able to put on a new trade this week without seeing the other prices in my portfolio (only the available cash balance was shown).

[John Hjorth]

Mostly once a day, after 3:30 pm when both the European and the NA markets are open [my local time]. Not because I'm a buyer or a seller every day, just to get some kind of perception of what's going on in the market - day by day.

[scorpioncapital]

In a video to students in 2001, Buffett was asked how often he checked Berkshire stock price he said once every 2 weeks. I'm working on checking less too through a combination of post-it notes on my desk and stop loss and limit orders that I've decided upon in advance. I've settled on once a week on Wednesdays :)

 

 

 

[TheAiGuy]

all the time. WTF does it matter?

[Jurgis]

all the time. WTF does it matter?

 

8)

[bmichaud]

A) If you are holding companies you know you will own, almost regardless, for 5+ years, it's just tedious to check the price. Who cares.

 

B) If you are at all opportunistic, it is almost irresponsible to not check multiple times a day in order to get a 'feel' for what is going on in the market.

 

I fall into the 'B' camp, but am like Cardboard...I look WAYYYY too frequently, even adjusting for the fact that I work in the industry. Fortunately, I do not trade nearly as frequently as my 'watching' would indicate.

[TheAiGuy]

In all seriousness, you have to learn to act rationally in this game, and in some circumstances, that means ignoring your emotions. That may or may not correlate with checking stock prices all the time. Uncle Warren is suggesting a shortcut, one that is kind of dumb unless you think that it's directed at the people whose business he's purchased and the people that invested with him 50 years ago. You are not that; if you are interested in stock investing, you will probably check stock prices regularly, and you will need to learn the hard way.