i stopped checking my portfolio every hour and my returns are basically the same except i sleep now

i used to check my brokerage app probably 40 times a day. wake up refresh, coffee refresh, bathroom refresh, before market open refresh, every 15 minutes during trading, after close refresh, before bed refresh. you know the drill

about two months ago my phone screen time report showed 4 hours a day in brokerage apps and i felt physically embarrassed looking at that number. it is not like i was making better decisions i was just watching

so i did this thing where i uninstalled the apps from my phone entirely. desktop only. and even then i only let myself check once in the morning and once after close unless i was actively placing a trade

heres what happened which is the part that kind of stings to admit. my returns didnt change at all. not better not worse. the same stocks moved the same way whether i watched them or not

what did change was that i stopped making impulsive trades at 11am when i saw price dip and thought i had to act. i still have a couple swing positions ive been holding for months and the biggest edge i have on those is literally just not touching them

the thing nobody tells you about trading is that most of the time you should be doing nothing and that feels wrong because the app is designed to make you feel like you should be doing something. every red candle is an emergency every green candle is fomo. the app doesnt profit when you sit still so the whole experience is engineered to make you act

not financial advice but if you find yourself opening your brokerage app during dinner or in the middle of a movie try deleting it for a week and see if your life isnt better. the stocks will still be there

anyone else ever looked at their screen time and been like ok i need to touch grass

i hold mostly etfs and a handful of individual names. not day trading anymore which helps