- Checking your crypto portfolio more than a handful of times a day suggests that you are anxious about your trades
- Anxiety can kill a trade and can lead to you stressing over your portfolio
- There are ways the reduce your trading anxiety, and therefore leave your phone alone
There’s nothing better than checking your crypto portfolio and seeing everything in the green, but checking in too often is an indicator that something is not right. There is no set number of times which you should or should not check your crypto portfolio per day of course, but checking more than a handful of times per day is a sure sign that you are worried about one or more of your trades.
Anxiety is the enemy of the trader and results in poorly executed trades. In this piece we identify the key reasons why you might be over-checking your crypto portfolio and how you can avoid it.
Over-investment
One reason for constantly checking your portfolio could be because you are over-invested in a particular trade. Going ‘all in’ can reward you with incredible gains, but it could also leave you with an equally large loss, and it is the anxiety to know which side the coin might fall that causes you to over-monitor the position.
The solution here is obvious but not palatable to those after that big win – don’t trade with leverage (or use very low levels) and have a position size threshold that you do not cross. Forcing yourself to risk no less than, say, 25% of your capital in any trade will ensure that your anxiety of a loss is reduced, while a number of these smaller wins will soon add up to one big win just without the associated anxiety.
You will then find that you are not needing to check your crypto portfolio anywhere near as much.
Necessity Rather than Desire
Trading is a speculative activity, and so doing so with borrowed money or money that is required elsewhere is a huge barrier to successful trading. We have covered the negatives associated with trading with borrowed money in a previous article, and the same goes for trying to trade your way out of a debt – those doing so will find themselves constantly checking their crypto portfolio to see how they are faring.
Trading with money that you would not be okay with losing is a recipe for anxiety and will not only end up with you checking your crypto portfolio far too much, it will also lead to you exiting and potentially re-entering trades at poorly chosen points, compounding your losses.
To resolve this, make sure you are only trading with money you can afford to lose and you will find your anxiety, and your crypto portfolio checking, is vastly reduced.
No Exit Points Set
Another trap that new traders fall into is not having clear exit points in mind when they enter a trade – they market buy a coin and see what happens. This is a disastrous policy that will mean that they have no idea when would be a good idea to sell, meaning they are constantly checking their crypto portfolio to keep an eye on how it is performing.
Buying a coin without having a clear plan in mind is likely the result of FOMO or taking advice from third parties. This is not advisable, but regardless of your rationale for taking a trade, you should have both bullish and bearish exit points in place once you buy. This way, you can sit back knowing the outcome of your trade one way or the other, meaning you are less worried about how it is getting on every hour of the day, and therefore less likely to be bothering your crypto portfolio.
Using alerts can also help you alleviate your concerns about how your trade is performing, as you know that the coin value is between certain two points.
Looking for a Quick Win
Cryptocurrencies may be one of the faster moving markets, but buying a coin and checking your crypto portfolio two minutes later to see if it has moved is a recipe for grey hairs and a drink problem. We have already discussed the ways of helping you to reduce the odds of your coin going straight into the red, but, unless you are intra-day scalping, you are likely looking at days or weeks for your setups to play out.
You should therefore equate your crypto portfolio checks to the amount of time you think it will take for your setup to play out, checking your portfolio at suitable intervals. Needing a quick win also speaks to the issues already raised about regarding the need for income over the desire for it.
Reduce the Crypto Portfolio Checking for a Stress Free Experience
These are the most common reasons why someone will constantly check their portfolio, and they all have their roots in anxiety. Reducing anxiety by only trading with money you can afford to lose, only investing percentages of your portfolio, and having clear exit points in place will reduce the anxiety associated with a trade, while employing alerts either side of key price points will mean there is virtually no need to check your crypto portfolio.
