'No-look November'.....

[Itsallaguess]

Anyone interested in having a little bit of fun during November?

Like many here I think I'm guilty of watching share-prices far too often, so I'm going to try to see how long I can last without carrying out any major portfolio-monitoring during the month of November.

I'm going to call it 'No-look November', so if anyone thinks that they're in the same boat as me, and would like to challenge themselves to see how they get on taking a break too, then it would be great to hear of anyone's experiences on this thread.

I think a couple of ground-rules might be best, as I do appreciate that people might have quite large sums of money in their portfolios, and I also appreciate that company-specific news can sometimes catch us all by surprise, and so in specific cases there may be a good call for share-specific interaction, which I think would be wise to allow in such circumstances.

So here's the rules -

1. During the month of November, see how long you can last without using your normal portfolio-monitoring processes. These might include your online broker accounts, other external portfolio-monitoring processes, or simply Googling a few individual prices of shares within your portfolio.

2. Exception can be made if major company news means that individual shares require monitoring for potential action within your portfolio. This can include potential to buy or sell, or to simply keep an eye on something major that has cropped up, but should only really be done on an individual basis where absolutely necessary.

3. Other than the above, a sense of self-honesty is expected, just to test how long we can last, away from the normal portfolio-monitoring processes we each may carry out on a normal, day-to-day basis.

Anyone up for it? November is a grim month sometimes, so I hope this might help us all get through the bugger with a bit of extra interest, if nothing else!

Cheers,

Itsallaguess

[Raptor]

Sounds fine but I have quite a few dividends coming in (9) , not enough to trigger buying though as spread across 3 accounts. Mind you am also away for a week (so that week would be a doddle).

Raptor.

[kiloran]

I think the whole of November is stretching it a bit. How about shortening the period a little? Let's say 1st November? Until around 10:00am? I might just about manage that.

--kiloran

[Itsallaguess]

I think the whole of November is stretching it a bit.

How about shortening the period a little? Let's say 1st November? Until around 10:00am? I might just about manage that.

Are you getting your hair cut that morning?

Just to be clear, if I make it to the 3rd then I'll award myself a little medal of some sort....

The bar really isn't being set for the whole of November. It's just to see how far we get!!

:O)

Itsallaguess

[OLTB]

I will give this a go - however, I will have to break the rule on day one! I will be re-investing dividends from my HYP on the 1st of the month - but once that is done, I"m sure that I won't be tearing the walls down wanting to look again until at least the 4th.

Cheers, OL 'Cold Turkey' TB

[Itsallaguess]

I will give this a go - however, I will have to break the rule on day one!

I will be re-investing dividends from my HYP on the 1st of the month - but once that is done, I"m sure that I won't be tearing the walls down wanting to look again until at least the 4th.

I think we're going to have to allow exceptions for things like planned-investments, so thanks for raising this and also to Raptor for doing the same.

So, again, a sense of 'honest-intent' will have to be part of this exercise, and we should only carry out what monitoring we do need to do when we're carrying out these acts of portfolio-maintenance.

Would that cover such eventualities do you think?

I mean, there's no need to take a quick peek at the rest of the portfolio just because we're re-investing some dividends is there?

Thanks for giving it a go chaps, it's good to know that I won't be on my own!!

Cheers,

Itsallaguess

[evilbungle]

I'll give it a go - currently I look about twice a day so not sure how long it will last, but it may be good for me - of course I will need to remove the Stock tracker widget from my phone home page.

[dredd0]

I can honestly say that this is the proverbial piece of cake. I very seldom look at my portfolio more than once a month anyway.

[Itsallaguess]

I can honestly say that this is the proverbial piece of cake. I very seldom look at my portfolio more than once a month anyway.

I think it's great that you're in that position.

I also think that there's others, like me, who look an awful lot more frequently, and for whom something like this may prove to be much more of a test of will....

Cheers,

Itsallaguess

[tjh290633]

I have abstained for some time in the past, when I have been on a long cruise. However the changes that occurred while I was away mean that I shall not repeat the exercise.

A rights issue, for example, might need action before I resumed watching.

TJH

[Gengulphus]

I have abstained for some time in the past, when I have been on a long cruise. However the changes that occurred while I was away mean that I shall not repeat the exercise.

A rights issue, for example, might need action before I resumed watching.

I think that's supposed to be covered by (from the OP, with my bold):

"2. Exception can be made if major company news means that individual shares require monitoring for potential action within your portfolio. This can include potential to buy or sell, or to simply keep an eye on something major that has cropped up, but should only really be done on an individual basis where absolutely necessary."

One should be able to set things up so that e.g. emails from one's broker alerted one to corporate actions that require attention, and of course any really major news about a company will probably be brought to one's attention by one or more posts here, but one didn't routinely look at the portfolio or try to chase up the more minor news that is often also posted about. But of course, being able to do something is not the same thing as being able to do it easily - it could require a lot of changes...

And that's the reason why I'm afraid I won't be participating. I'd be happy in principle to do it for my HYP, whose shares I often basically already treat in that way for months or possibly even years on end, at least as regards taking a proper "How's this doing?" or "What do I do about this?" look at them that I feel is necessary for running the HYP (*). As a measure of that, earlier this year I happened to notice that Electrocomponents was the second-best capital performer in my HYP, which came as quite a surprise to me because I had it tagged in my mind as a "hasn't gone anywhere, but not quite worth tinkering it away" share - the point of which is that on its average buying cost of about 210p, it had last been in that position in the first half of 2016. I.e. based on that buying price and looking at a share price chart, I hadn't taken a proper look at it for at least a year (and quite possibly up to about 7.5 years).

But I also run a smallcaps portfolio, in a way that does require (and get) reasonably frequent proper looks. My CREST account contains parts of both the HYP and the smallcaps portfolio, and various spreadsheets and other stuff I have is for the combined portfolio of both of them plus some other odds and ends, so I inevitably see stuff about the HYP in passing and occasionally get distracted by it (e.g. my initial reaction to the above example about Electrocomponents was "What!? Some mistake surely... I wonder what it is", followed by looking into it in detail and finding that however unlikely it looked, it wasn't a mistake: the market had quite suddenly become enthusiastic about the share, with the result that it had more than doubled in 2016...).

So although I'd be happy in principle to participate for my HYP, I wouldn't be for the smallcaps portfolio. And in practice, doing it for just one of them isn't feasible because the two are entangled with each other in a way that would be expensive to disentangle (in both time and money terms - and it's the time part of that which is really prohibitive). Or at least, it isn't feasible without stretching my "sense of self-honesty" (as the OP puts it) beyond breaking point...

(*) That's as opposed to just seeing something about them in passing, or taking a proper look for some other purpose - for instance, I recently took a proper look at how Aviva had done over the nearly 15 years it's been in my HYP. That wasn't because I needed to know in order to run the portfolio - I already knew that the answer was "pretty poorly but not quite badly enough to make me tinker it away"! - but because I wanted to be able to say something more specific in a post (which turned out to be "down on capital, but by under 1%; dividend per share just below where it was when I started").

Gengulphus

[coffeeandsmokes]

As a Millennial with a previous obsession with social media I feel I may be able to offer a suggestion here. Stopping for 30 days straight is a massive test of will; what I did was gradually increase the gaps between the days I let myself look:

Look
have a day away
look
have two days away
look
have three days away

and so on until the Fear Of Missing Out leaves you and your life balances - At present rates I look at FB about once a year.

FWIW I only log into at my ISA between Direct Debit Day and Buying Day, I can make all the adjustments I need to then. But I appreciate running an HYP may require more activity than my LTBH basket of ITs.

Best,

J

[Itsallaguess]

As a Millennial with a previous obsession with social media I feel I may be able to offer a suggestion here. Stopping for 30 days straight is a massive test of will; what I did was gradually increase the gaps between the days I let myself look:

Look
have a day away
look
have two days away
look
have three days away

and so on until the Fear Of Missing Out leaves you and your life balances - At present rates I look at FB about once a year.

FWIW I only log into at my ISA between Direct Debit Day and Buying Day, I can make all the adjustments I need to then. But I appreciate running an HYP may require more activity than my LTBH basket of ITs.

Just to be clear, I wasn't expecting anyone that might be interested in this idea to actually stop for the whole of November. I tried to make clear in my opening post that I was simply trying to test myself to see how long I could last, and that's still my intention.

I also appreciate the posts by others that discuss reasons why they may not be able to do so, and that's of course completely valid in many circumstances, and would sometimes be the case with areas of my own portfolio, but I expect a quiet time between now and early next year, so I thought this might be as good a time as any to see how I could get on.

I also appreciate the comments from Gengulphus, when he discusses the difficulty in only monitoring part of his own portfolio, where some areas will need much closer scrutiny than perhaps his HYP holdings. Often things aren't set up to carry out these partial-view tasks so easily, I agree.

So this won't be for everyone, but I was hoping there might be some interest in it for people in a similar situation as my own, who think they probably over-monitor things and would like to test themselves too, so thanks to those who are willing to give it a go - it's good to know that I won't be on my own come November the 1st!

Of course, if the markets continue their current downwards trajectory, then not looking will become decidedly easier to manage!

Cheers,

Itsallaguess

[BarrenWuffett]

I have abstained for some time in the past, when I have been on a long cruise. However the changes that occurred while I was away mean that I shall not repeat the exercise.

A rights issue, for example, might need action before I resumed watching.

I think that's supposed to be covered by (from the OP, with my bold):

"2. Exception can be made if major company news means that individual shares require monitoring for potential action within your portfolio. This can include potential to buy or sell, or to simply keep an eye on something major that has cropped up, but should only really be done on an individual basis where absolutely necessary."

One should be able to set things up so that e.g. emails from one's broker alerted one to corporate actions that require attention, and of course any really major news about a company will probably be brought to one's attention by one or more posts here, but one didn't routinely look at the portfolio or try to chase up the more minor news that is often also posted about. But of course, being able to do something is not the same thing as being able to do it easily - it could require a lot of changes...

And that's the reason why I'm afraid I won't be participating. I'd be happy in principle to do it for my HYP, whose shares I often basically already treat in that way for months or possibly even years on end, at least as regards taking a proper "How's this doing?" or "What do I do about this?" look at them that I feel is necessary for running the HYP (*). As a measure of that, earlier this year I happened to notice that Electrocomponents was the second-best capital performer in my HYP, which came as quite a surprise to me because I had it tagged in my mind as a "hasn't gone anywhere, but not quite worth tinkering it away" share - the point of which is that on its average buying cost of about 210p, it had last been in that position in the first half of 2016. I.e. based on that buying price and looking at a share price chart, I hadn't taken a proper look at it for at least a year (and quite possibly up to about 7.5 years).

But I also run a smallcaps portfolio, in a way that does require (and get) reasonably frequent proper looks. My CREST account contains parts of both the HYP and the smallcaps portfolio, and various spreadsheets and other stuff I have is for the combined portfolio of both of them plus some other odds and ends, so I inevitably see stuff about the HYP in passing and occasionally get distracted by it (e.g. my initial reaction to the above example about Electrocomponents was "What!? Some mistake surely... I wonder what it is", followed by looking into it in detail and finding that however unlikely it looked, it wasn't a mistake: the market had quite suddenly become enthusiastic about the share, with the result that it had more than doubled in 2016...).

So although I'd be happy in principle to participate for my HYP, I wouldn't be for the smallcaps portfolio. And in practice, doing it for just one of them isn't feasible because the two are entangled with each other in a way that would be expensive to disentangle (in both time and money terms - and it's the time part of that which is really prohibitive). Or at least, it isn't feasible without stretching my "sense of self-honesty" (as the OP puts it) beyond breaking point...

(*) That's as opposed to just seeing something about them in passing, or taking a proper look for some other purpose - for instance, I recently took a proper look at how Aviva had done over the nearly 15 years it's been in my HYP. That wasn't because I needed to know in order to run the portfolio - I already knew that the answer was "pretty poorly but not quite badly enough to make me tinker it away"! - but because I wanted to be able to say something more specific in a post (which turned out to be "down on capital, but by under 1%; dividend per share just below where it was when I started").

Gengulphus

It's supposed to be a bit of fun....

[mickeypops]

I'm game - some days when I'm bored I look at my SIPP accounts far too often. I'm going to try and last until the first weekend of the month anyway!

[Itsallaguess]

Well, tomorrow is November 1st, so good luck to everyone who's willing to give this a go!

An update from anyone will be welcome news, and at the very least will let me know that I'm not struggling on my own!

Cheers,

Itsallaguess

[OLTB]

I'm binge looking currently...

Cheers, OLTB.

[Itsallaguess]

Well, we're into the first day, and I've got to say this is a great deal easier than I thought it was going to be...

Itsallaguess

[JMN2]

I caved in already

[mickeypops]

Well, we're into the first day, and I've got to say this is a great deal easier than I thought it was going to be...

Itsallaguess

.... at 4.52am?