How to Stop Checking Your XEQT Portfolio Every Day (And Why You Should)

I need to confess something embarrassing. In the first six months after I started buying XEQT, I checked my portfolio an average of eleven times per day. Before breakfast. During meetings. On the toilet. Right before bed.

I know this because my phone’s screen time report told me so. Wealthsimple was my number one app by usage, beating out Instagram, YouTube, and even my messaging apps. I wasn’t just investing – I was obsessing.

And here is the thing: all that checking didn’t make me a single extra dollar. In fact, it almost cost me thousands.

If you’re reading this while sneaking a peek at your portfolio, this post is for you. Let’s talk about why we compulsively check our investments, why it’s actively hurting our returns, and how to build a healthier relationship with your money.

1. Why We Can’t Stop Checking (It’s Not Your Fault)

Let’s get the science out of the way first, because understanding the “why” makes the fix a whole lot easier.

The Dopamine Loop

Every time you open your portfolio and see green, your brain gets a tiny hit of dopamine – the same chemical that fires when you get a like on social media or win a hand of poker. Your brain learns: “checking portfolio = potential reward.” So it nudges you to check again. And again.

The problem? Your brain doesn’t care that the $47 gain you saw at 10:14 AM is meaningless noise. It just wants the hit.

Loss Aversion on Steroids

Nobel Prize-winning research by Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky showed that losses feel roughly twice as painful as equivalent gains feel good. So when you check your portfolio and see a $200 drop, it stings twice as hard as a $200 gain would make you smile.

This creates a nasty cycle:

• You check and see a loss – you feel terrible
• You check again hoping to see recovery – maybe you do, small relief
• You check again – another dip, more pain
• The emotional rollercoaster makes you want to DO something (sell, switch, panic)

The Illusion of Control

When we check frequently, we feel like we’re “staying on top of things.” It feels responsible. It feels productive. But with a passive ETF like XEQT, there is literally nothing for you to act on. BlackRock is rebalancing. The market is doing its thing. Your job is to contribute and wait.

Checking doesn’t give you control. It gives you the illusion of control with very real anxiety as a side effect.

2. The Real Cost of Checking Your Portfolio Too Often

This isn’t just about feelings. Frequent portfolio checking has measurable, documented costs to your actual returns.

The Landmark Study You Need to Know

A famous study by Shlomo Benartzi and Richard Thaler found that investors who checked their portfolio quarterly were willing to allocate 67% to stocks, while investors who checked monthly only allocated 41% to stocks. Same investors, same options – the only difference was how often they looked.

Less frequent checkers stayed more aggressive, stayed in the market longer, and earned higher returns over time.

What the Data Says

On any given day, the stock market goes up about 54% of the time. That means 46% of the time you check, you’ll see red. Over a month, markets are positive about 60% of the time. Over a year, about 73%. Over 10 years? Historically, close to 95%.

The less often you look, the more often you see gains. The more often you see gains, the more likely you are to stay invested. And staying invested is the single most important factor in building wealth.

My Personal Reckoning

During one particularly volatile week in early 2025, I watched my XEQT position drop about $1,800 across three days. I almost sold. My finger was literally hovering over the sell button. I reasoned that I would “buy back in lower.”

Instead, I went for a walk, and by the end of the following week, the portfolio had recovered and then some. If I had sold, I would have locked in a loss and probably missed the recovery while waiting for an even lower entry point that never came.

That near-miss scared me enough to change my habits entirely.

3. The Hidden Behaviors That Frequent Checking Triggers

Beyond the emotional toll, compulsive checking leads to a cascade of wealth-destroying behaviors:

Performance Chasing

When you see XEQT down for a few weeks, you start Googling “best performing ETF 2026” or eyeing that tech fund that’s up 15% this quarter. Before you know it, you’re abandoning a perfectly sound strategy to chase whatever is hot right now.

The data is clear: investors who switch strategies frequently underperform those who stick with one approach by 1-3% per year. Over decades, that compounds into hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Unnecessary Trading

Frequent checking leads to frequent trading. Even on a commission-free platform like Wealthsimple, unnecessary trading can trigger:

• Capital gains taxes in non-registered accounts
• Spread costs (the difference between buy and sell prices)
• Opportunity cost of being out of the market while deciding what to do
• Deviation from your long-term plan

The Comparison Trap

The more you check, the more you compare. You see a Reddit post about someone’s 40% return on a concentrated tech bet. You see a headline about Bitcoin hitting new highs. You start feeling like your steady, diversified XEQT returns are somehow inadequate.

They’re not. XEQT is designed to capture the return of the entire global stock market. Over long periods, very few active strategies beat it consistently. But you’ll never feel that confidence if you’re comparing daily snapshots.

Stress and Decision Fatigue

Every time you check and see a loss, you’re spending mental energy deciding NOT to sell. That takes willpower. Willpower is finite. Eventually, during a bad enough day or week, you run out of it and make a decision you’ll regret.

The best investors remove the need for willpower entirely.

4. Seven Practical Strategies to Break the Checking Habit

Okay, enough about the problem. Here is what actually works.

Strategy 1: Delete the App from Your Home Screen

I’m not saying delete Wealthsimple entirely. Just move it off your home screen and into a folder buried on page three. The tiny bit of extra friction – having to search for the app instead of tapping it reflexively – is surprisingly effective.

When I did this, my daily checks dropped from 11 to about 2 within a week, and down to once every few days within a month.

Strategy 2: Set a Check-In Schedule

Give yourself a specific day and time to review your portfolio. I settled on the first Saturday of each month, with my morning coffee. That’s it. Twelve check-ins per year.

Here is what I look at during my monthly review:

• Did my automatic contributions go through?
• Is my overall allocation still where I want it? (With XEQT, the answer is always yes – it rebalances itself)
• Do I need to adjust my contribution amount based on any life changes?

That is the entire review. Five minutes, tops.

Strategy 3: Automate Everything

The best way to stop checking is to remove any reason to check. On Wealthsimple, you can set up recurring buys that automatically purchase XEQT on a schedule. Once that’s running:

• Contributions happen automatically
• XEQT purchases happen automatically
• Rebalancing happens automatically (thanks, BlackRock)
• Dividend reinvestment happens automatically

There is literally nothing for you to do. Checking becomes purely recreational anxiety.

Strategy 4: Turn Off Push Notifications

Go into your brokerage app settings right now and turn off:

• Price alerts
• Daily performance summaries
• Market news notifications
• “Your portfolio is up/down” messages

Every notification is an invitation to check. Kill the invitations.

Strategy 5: Replace the Habit

If you check your portfolio out of boredom (be honest), you need a replacement behavior. When you feel the urge to open Wealthsimple, open something else instead:

• A book or audiobook
• A podcast about long-term investing philosophy (not daily market news)
• A hobby app
• Literally anything else

The checking habit usually occupies the same “I’m bored and want a quick dopamine hit” slot as social media scrolling. Give your brain an alternative.

Strategy 6: Zoom Out Your Chart

If you absolutely must look at your portfolio, change your default chart view from “1 day” or “1 week” to “all time” or “1 year.” Seeing the long-term upward trend is a completely different emotional experience than watching today’s random walk.

On Wealthsimple, you can tap the time range on your performance chart. Set it to “All” and leave it there.

Strategy 7: Write Down Your Investment Plan

This was the most powerful change for me. I wrote a simple one-page investment plan:

“I invest $X per month into XEQT through automatic purchases. I will continue this regardless of market conditions. I will not sell unless I need the money for a planned expense at least 5 years away. I expect significant drops of 20-40% at some point and I will not sell during them.”

When I feel the urge to check or make changes, I re-read that page. It’s like a letter from my rational self to my panicking self.

5. When It IS Okay to Check Your Portfolio

I’m not advocating for total ignorance of your finances. There are legitimate reasons to log in:

• Annual tax season – you may need to access tax documents
• Life changes – new job, marriage, home purchase, baby. These might warrant a contribution adjustment
• Rebalancing your overall financial picture – if you have multiple accounts, an annual check to make sure your TFSA, RRSP, and non-registered allocations still make sense
• Confirming contributions – a quick monthly check that your automatic buys went through is fine
• Major life milestones – approaching retirement, paying off a house, kids starting university

The key distinction: check with a purpose, not out of anxiety or boredom.

6. The “Set and Forget” Mindset Shift

Here is the core mindset shift that changed everything for me:

Investing is not entertainment. It’s a utility.

You don’t check your electricity meter eleven times a day. You don’t open your savings account to watch the interest accrue in real time. You set it up, you let it run, and you check in occasionally to make sure everything is working.

XEQT was designed for exactly this approach. It holds over 9,000 stocks across the globe. BlackRock rebalances it for you. The MER is 0.20%. There are no decisions for you to make on a daily, weekly, or even monthly basis.

The wealthiest long-term investors I know personally have two things in common:

1. They invest consistently – same amount, every pay period, rain or shine
2. They almost never look – they trust the process and get on with their lives

Warren Buffett famously said his favorite holding period is “forever.” He wasn’t kidding, and he certainly wasn’t refreshing a brokerage app on his phone.

7. What Happens When You Actually Stop Checking

When I finally broke my checking habit, three unexpected things happened:

I Got My Time Back

Eleven checks per day, even at just 30 seconds each, was over 30 hours per year spent staring at a number I couldn’t control. That’s almost a full work week. I now spend that time on things that actually improve my life.

My Returns Improved

Not because the market changed, but because I stopped making impulsive decisions. No more selling during dips. No more chasing hot stocks. No more “rebalancing” that was really just anxiety-driven tinkering. In the 18 months since I stopped compulsive checking, I haven’t made a single trade outside my automatic purchases.

My Stress Levels Dropped Dramatically

This was the biggest surprise. I didn’t realize how much background anxiety my portfolio checking was causing until I stopped. Market crashes still happen, and I hear about them on the news like everyone else. But I don’t feel them in my gut the way I used to, because I’m not watching the red numbers tick down in real time.

8. A 30-Day Challenge to Break the Habit

If you’re ready to try this, here is a concrete plan:

Week 1: Reduce and Replace

• Move your brokerage app off your home screen
• Turn off all financial notifications
• Set a calendar reminder for one check-in at the end of the week
• When you feel the urge to check, open a different app instead

Week 2: Automate and Detach

• Set up automatic recurring buys for XEQT if you haven’t already
• Write down your one-page investment plan
• Allow yourself two check-ins this week, maximum

Week 3: Trust the Process

• One check-in maximum this week
• If market news makes you anxious, remind yourself: “XEQT holds 9,000+ stocks across the globe. No single event will destroy my portfolio.”
• Re-read your investment plan if you waver

Week 4: The New Normal

• One check-in this week
• Notice how much calmer you feel
• Congratulate yourself – you’ve just given your portfolio the best gift possible: an owner who won’t interfere with it

After 30 days, settle into a monthly check-in schedule. Your future self (and your portfolio) will thank you.

The Bottom Line

XEQT is built to be boring. That’s a feature, not a bug. The entire point of buying an all-in-one, globally diversified ETF is that you don’t need to watch it.

Every time you check your portfolio, you’re giving your emotional brain an opportunity to override your rational brain. And emotional brains are terrible investors.

The best thing you can do for your XEQT portfolio is to fund it consistently, automate everything, and then go live your life. The money will grow. The compound interest will work its magic. And in 10, 20, or 30 years, you’ll look back and be grateful that you stopped checking and started trusting.

Now close your brokerage app and go do something fun. Your portfolio will be fine.