Recent research released by investment fund manager Fidelity suggests that the majority of investors (53%) do not know how well their portfolio has performed over the past twelve months.
There could be a few reasons for this, such as a lack of interest, with investors happy to let the market get on with its ups and downs, “safe” in the knowledge that over the long term their funds or stocks and shares will outperform other forms of investment. It could also be a lack of information – keeping track of investments can be a time consuming process – especially if you’ve built up a lot of different investments over the years. Thankfully, with the use of online portfolio tools, and the emergence of aggregation services, such as the Fidelity FundsNetwork, which allow you to group together many of your investments, it is now easier to get an overall view of your portfolio than it was before. Of course, if you’ve got enough money, you can get someone to do this for you.
What sort of investor are you? Do you check the performance of your funds every day? Every week? Once a year or maybe even less?
I guess it’s a matter of finding a balance – too much checking and you can get obsessed with making changes, which can be just as bad as taking no interest at all and failing to review your portfolio.