Delete Your Portfolio Tracker

Set It And Forget It

I have been writing a bit about how looking at things heading towards the red can be a bittersweet process. On one hand you are getting another buying opportunity, but on the other hand, your investments are losing dollar value.

One way that I have really cleaned up my morale about this continuing situation has been deleting my portfolio tracker from my phone. Whether you use Coinmarketcap, Coingecko or something else, a lot of us have put a copy of our transactions into an aggregator like this to track the current value of our portfolio. This again presents a dual-edged sword as you can easily know your cryptocurrency portfolio value, but it can also become something that you will easily obsess over and constantly refresh.

One aspect of my past gambling endeavors that has leaked into my investment efforts has been the need to constantly know what is going on and seeking to have control over the situation despite the fact that controlling external events like market price or the score of a game you don't play in is impossible. It becomes easy to compulsively check a portfolio and grimace or breathe a sigh of relief at the value you see.

I have found that since deleting my portfolio aggregators (note: not deleting the wallets, simply the tracker), I have found myself checking coin values much less often. I'd be willing to say that it cut in half the amount of time that I spent looking at price.

Why Does This Matter?

If you have a long term investing strategy like I do (not wanting to sell until at least 2025) it is actually irrelevant what the current value of your holdings are. It is of course important to know if major events are happening regarding your holdings like we just saw with LUNA, so that you are able to cut your losses when crap hits the fan, but for most projects it just adds stress and FUD.

Personally, the more I look at the value of my portfolio, the more inclined I am to make decisions that may not benefit me long term. If I see a token is dipping a bit (even if from pure market movement with no catalyst) I may be inclined to sell it off and purchase a different asset. Nothing good usually comes from impulsive decisions, and tracking your net worth constantly is a dangerous game to play as it leads to only compulsive actions when done too often.

I think that it is a nice thing to have at your disposal to know where you stand financially, but it is not worth the negatives that come along with it to constantly be worrying about dollar value. I will probably try to check my portfolio value once or twice a month rather than 10-20 times per day and hope that this allows me to gain insights into performance without inspiring compulsive action.

Who I am:
My name is Rob and I am a financial analyst with interests in cryptocurrency and blockchain. I have enjoyed my time thus far engaging with Web 3.0 and am looking to continue learning more and sharing what I learn through my experience.