When I was working with a private equity firm, in the middle of our office was a gigantic TV screen that could raise your anxiety within a minute.
This TV was always tuned to CNBC, which would constantly stream the latest market news and the Sensex level, by the minute. It would make you feel like something was happening every minute.
But why did we need the market news minute-by-minute? We did not. As long-term investors, what mattered to us was a company’s value in the next 5 years, not the next 5 minutes.
However, when you see the Sensex ticking up and down, your heartbeat rises and you feel like the world is going crazy, when in reality, it is just a usual day. It is just that you are just too zoomed-in – that’s all.
All the minute-by-minute fluctuations in the stock market are just noise. And a big part of being an investor is learning to ignore that noise.
And even life in general is like that – we get upset for small setbacks that are just like the stock market noise.
The secret to building a good life is to zoom out and see the long-term. Everything else, including the daily ups and downs, is just noise.
– Rajan