Blocking out ‘noise’ for the good of your portfolio

It’s so easy to feel overwhelmed by the endless barrage of negative news or ‘noise’, which can stoke anxiety about the performance of your investments and doubts over whether your investment strategy is on course. Learning to block out this noise, which may influence hasty or erratic investment decisions, is essential.

By keeping a record of your reasons for investing, you can help temper any inclination to deviate off course. Revisiting your initial decisions enables you to gauge whether your long-term priorities have altered.

Step back and breathe

The use of devices allows us to instantly be updated, which is important for things like keeping in touch with family, but with investing, avoid the temptation to set up alert notifications for companies or funds in which you are invested. Short but sweet advice from global investment guru Warren Buffett in 2016, after a period of extreme market volatility, perpetually rings true, “Don’t watch the market closely.”

Although there are obviously no guarantees, blocking out ‘noise’ to focus on the long term, gives your investments a greater chance of yielding positive returns and benefiting from compounding.