Totally agree. The markets have evolved from "investing" to "gambling" for the most part. Computerized trading makes that even moreso, cuz the machines will start selling (or buying) and will do so to any "news" (or rumor). And when the machines start selling - as they did last March/April, the bottom can and will fall out quickly..perhaps more quickly than any time in history. (Remember last Spring? Numerous days when the "circuit breakers" kicked in not one, not two, but several times per day. That's never happened before - but it's likely we'll see precisely that on the next big downturn).
The traditional 'school of thought' is to not watch the day to day but "invest" for years while not watching (just like you said). Unfortunately, the markets are by and large now completely detached from INVESTING and are quickly evolving more into gambling, where the value of a stock has little to do with underlying valuation and more to do with emotions and what the Wall Street computers have decided to do with it..add in Technical Analysis and it gets even worse, cuz that's pretty much 100% computerized buying and selling..
An old Wall Street adage seems to apply more than ever.."Stocks take the stairs up, and the elevator down"..I'm pretty sure we're gonna see quite the elevator ride in the near future with the way Biden and the far left are pumping trillions of $$ into the economy..that's gonna be a disaster for US equities, bonds and cash. So for that reason - check out International equities, which don't have crazy, far left radicals running the country and who's P/E values are much more in line with "normal" than we have here in the US.
Stairs up,elevator down.
I don’t believe an individual can realistically keep up with the software moves which are nothing more than someone’s opinion from some point in time moving at light speed over and over. If this then that.
What good is watching day to day going to do if you are not going to act on it? I am not. With so much volatility market timing just doesn’t work out very well for most things unless you can be high frequency.
Yes, I recall last spring and the time before and the time before that.
Decisions are worse with funds since they only trade on the day’s close. That is almost never good news in something that moves so fast in a herd mentality.
I am watching prices go up by the day now for things. A $328 microwave on February 9 is now $389. Just one example of course but I’m seeing the building supplies follow lumber and just about everything else is jumping on the bandwagon.