If you’ve been following the markets this year, you’re likely exhausted. Investing veterans will know that trying to anticipate each market rise and fall is often a lost cause, but it can be hard to let it go when your investments are tied to important life goals, like buying a home or retiring.
Is taking a break okay?
It feels unnatural to take a ‘lazy’ strategy towards investing, but those who simply keep their money in the market tend to do the best in the long term. A study by Capital Group found that since the S&P 500 started in 1957, there has not been a single stretch of 10 years where the market didn’t experience gains. Just 7% of five-year periods have been negative, and 12% of three-year periods. But for a single year, that increases to about a third of the time. That’s why having a long horizon is one of the most essential factors to successful investing.
Think about the market 20 years ago: most of us will be hard-pressed to remember each little twist and turn (But in case you were wondering, oil prices were hitting new peaks. Sound familiar?). Despite all the bumps, which would include the Great Financial Crisis and Covid-19, had we invested in global markets then, our money would be in a much better place now.
How often should you check in?
While we have instant access to our investment portfolios now through our phones, it doesn’t mean we have to take advantage of it. In fact, many professionals recommend only checking your portfolio every few months. This helps quiet the day-to-day noise and allows you to focus on long-term trends. Then, when you do these check-ins, you can do a real assessment to see if your assets are serving the purpose you need, or if you need to adjust.
One of the most famous market mantras is ‘invest and forget’. Easier said than done, but there are strategies and tools you can use to let yourself have peace of mind while professionals, or computers, do the monitoring for you. Here’s a few ways they may help:
The hands-off approach
The easiest way to trim back the amount of time you spend assessing the markets is to have someone else do it for you. A financial adviser is out of the budget for many of us, but we still do have access to more general investment products that make decisions, so we don’t have to. While this doesn’t have the bespoke aspect of an adviser, it does still mean a professional is in charge.
If you’re comfortable with have all your money in stocks, and don’t mind choosing different investments yourself, you could simply place your money in a few actively managed funds across different regions and let the managers handle the rest.
If you prefer a mix of investments, like stocks and bonds, or aren’t comfortable choosing how to split your money across different regions, you can rely on multi-asset funds. We often refer to these as all-in-one funds, because you put your money in one fund, and the managers decide how much goes into stocks, bonds, cash or other investments, and what funds to invest through. Many major companies offer these funds, and AJ Bell has its own range as well.
The benefit of this method is that you know these managers will be looking at your investments on a regular basis, so they are likely to make changes if necessary. You can still do occasional checks as well to ensure that you’re comfortable with the strategy.
Set your investing notifications
Market dips can present an opportunity to purchase a stock at a cheaper price than you might have seen for a while. Some investors may be keen to take advantage of these price drops, but don’t want to check each day. If you’re investing in stocks, stop loss orders and price alerts can be helpful. These work similarly to a feature like Google Flights: you set up a notification and for something you’d like to buy (or sell), and you get an alert when the stock falls to a more interesting territory price-wise.
Stop loss and limit orders are a feature you can set up within your portfolio that will trigger an automatic buy or sell when a UK-listed stock reaches a certain price. For example, you can set up an automatic purchase of a stock once it hits £20 per share. It’s important to realise that setting up an automatic order doesn’t mean you will buy or sell that share for that exact price. It just means the order will be executed when that price is hit. So, while it will typically be in the range, it likely won’t be exact.
If you don’t want to execute the order but do want to know when it hits a certain level, you can set up a price alert. This feature will simply tell you when stocks reach a price that you designated.
While these are helpful features for stock, investment trust and ETF investors, these alerts aren’t built in for open-ended funds, nor overseas-listed stocks on AJ Bell’s platform. If you invest mostly through open-ended funds, setting notifications in your calendar for a monthly check might help the investments not slip your mind, and keep you from constant checks in the meantime.
If you need your money soon
If you have shorter-term needs for your money, such as in the next three to five years, waiting to eke out the last bits of growth may not be the best strategy. If your money won’t have time to recover in the case of a market dip, it might be time to consider derisking while the going is good, instead of trying to catch the market as it’s falling.
Hannah Williford: Content Writer
Hannah joined AJ Bell in 2025 as an investment writer. She was previously a journalist at Portfolio Adviser Magazine, reporting on multi-asset, fixed income and equity funds, as well as macroeconomic impacts and regulatory changes...
