You get lots of emails. I get lots of emails.
(There's a rumour that The Motley Fool sends a lot of emails, but I can neither confirm nor deny…)
But there's one email I never read, and I always delete.
It arrives weekly, from a service I use religiously. In fact, I wouldn't be without it.
But the email has nothing for me… and it could actually be harmful.
So, it always goes in the bin.
Unread.
Which email is it?
Well, I feel guilty mentioning it. Because I like not only the service that stands behind it, but the company and the people who work there.
In fact, I met with one of them for coffee this morning (sorry, Jessica!).
Perhaps surprisingly, too, the email isn't trying to sell me anything.
It's chock full of information that the company doubtlessly expects I want to see.
I also suspect it's the most popular email they send each week.
Just… not with me.
Not that I dislike the email. Or the content inside it.
And the company itself is doing anything wrong by sending it.
Indeed, if it stopped sending this particular email, I imagine its customers would complain… or at least ask for it to be restored.
So what is this email that, in the words of the old Hey Hey, It's Saturday Red Faces promo 'we all hate, but you all love'?
Well, it's simply an email that gives me a weekly snapshot of price changes in my share portfolio, sent by the excellent Sharesight portfolio tracking service.
And why do I hate it so much?
Well, truth be told, I don't hate it.
But it does have the very real potential to be bad for my financial health.
At this point, I imagine most of you are nodding your heads, if you've been hanging around these parts for any length of time. You know where I'm going, here.
The rest of you are wondering what the hell I'm complaining about.
After all, it doesn't contain anything explosive.
The data isn't wrong.
The company isn't wrong for providing it.
No-one is making me do anything with that information.
And isn't knowledge, power, anyway?
Why could I possibly dislike it so much?
Good questions. Tell 'em the answer, Blaise Pascal:
"All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone."
Or, more prosaically, we can be harmed by the urge to "Don't just sit there, do something."
The email, itself, has no power to make me do anything.
But our brains, so well evolved for taking evasive action at the merest hint of potential disaster, and so easily bored, don't like doing nothing.
We're biologically primed, and environmentally conditioned, to look for something to do, or to change.
That email, so benign when left unopened, can easily become the proverbial devil on my shoulder.
"Are you sure those are the right shares?"
"Did that company's shares fall last week?"
"What if they keep falling?
"I've made some money, maybe I should take profits?"
If you're an investor, and you're honest with yourself, you'll be familiar with those nagging doubts.
I certainly am.
And frankly, Sharesight are the good guys here. Most (not all!) brokers will only happily tell you, as often as you care to look, how your shares are performing.
Second by second, minute by minute, hour by hour, for 30 trading hours a week.
Why? Well, they make money when you trade, not when you do something else.
They want you to be the person in Pascal's warning.
Shares up? Do something!
Shares down? Do something!
Shares unchanged? You know it… they'd love you to do something.
And they know they're tilling some fertile soil. We humans are already predisposed to taking action, rather than sitting still, patiently.
If they can just remind us… incentivise us… tap us on the shoulder and suggest we might like to make sure there's nothing we should buy or sell…
It's why day-trading exists. Not because there's overwhelming evidence that you're likely to make a motza (there's not, and you're not!), but because they can appeal to our ego and impatience and greed.
And, well, because it works.
For the record, I know that's not why Sharesight sends that weekly email, by the way.
They don't make money if I trade. They just reckon most of their customers want an update on their portfolio.
Which, as I mentioned above, is almost certainly accurate – they're giving their customers what they want.
But it's also why I delete it.
I could very easily fall into the self-set trap of using it as a stimulus to review my portfolio.
I could open it and kick myself for my shares being down, or congratulate myself for them being up.
I could wonder if I should cut my losses, or double down. If I should 'take profits' or add more.
They're not bad questions, by the way. Except for the way they're couched.
See, you shouldn't buy shares because they're up. Or down.
You shouldn't sell for those reasons, either.
You should buy if you think today's price is cheap, relative to the future you see for a business.
You should sell, if you think the future is bleaker than the share price suggests.
Neither of those depends on what the share price was a day, week, year or decade ago.
No, there's nothing wrong with the email they send me.
But there's everything wrong with giving in to the temptation to take action on the basis of it.
And the easiest way to avoid giving into temptation? Avoid the temptation itself.
I'm very happy to be a Sharesight customer. I expect to remain a customer for years. The information and record-keeping is excellent, and the people are terrific.
And, as I said, the email they send is nothing but information about my portfolio, sent directly to me, to save me needing to log in to their website, if I wanted it.
But – with my apologies to the team responsible for it – I will keep deleting it, because I know my evolutionary biology, and I'm focused on the future, not the past.
Fool on!
