https://cat.strayforge.com/categories/reflection/ Recent content in Reflection on Highland Cat https://avatars.githubusercontent.com/u/10776938?s=400&u=69d013f3592cc59c8fa21810a1e7d9764056bfe1&v=4 https://avatars.githubusercontent.com/u/10776938?s=400&u=69d013f3592cc59c8fa21810a1e7d9764056bfe1&v=4 Hugo en Thu, 25 Jun 2026 18:47:16 -0700 https://cat.strayforge.com/posts/investment-reflection/ Thu, 25 Jun 2026 18:47:16 -0700 https://cat.strayforge.com/posts/investment-reflection/ <p>The first thing I do when I wake up every morning is to open the stock app and check my watchlist. It&rsquo;s a habit I developed and reinforced over the past few years. Admittedly, it&rsquo;s very time and energy consuming. Many times, I&rsquo;m not trying to actively trade, it&rsquo;s almost like an addiction that I have to watch the ticker price multiple times every day.</p> <p>When it comes to personal finance and investing, I believe I&rsquo;m a know how. Over the years,I read books (like <code>The Philosopy of Money</code> kind), forums (bogleheads etc), and all these resources tell you the same things, diversify, low-cost ETFs, maintain and balance your allocation, use tax-advantaged accounts. Over the years, I also watched myself made painful mistakes when I tried to out-play the market. If I think completely rational, I should just set my allocation and check my portfolio once or twice per year for rebalance and that should be it. So where comes the impulse of constantly checking the accounts?</p>