I Add Value

I track my money, investments on a monthly basis. After the markets plunged in Mar 2020, it was a rollercoaster ride for me, as it would have for anyone. And I had to constantly monitor what was happening to my money. Large cap to small cap stocks, gilt funds to ultra short term debt funds and money market funds - everything was volatile. I cut down on some types of investments, moved to other ones. And this active finance management continues till today. 

I am not sure whether equity is safe or debt or gold or just overnight funds. 

With this as the backdrop, I wondering this morning: how my investments as of Feb 2020 would be valued now assuming I had just gone to sleep in February and not made any changes. If I had not made any continuous changes to my portfolio I wanted to know how much less I would have now.

So I took my February 2020 data (units of each mutual fund, stocks etc) and applied today's NAV on those units. Guess how much I have more than the February 2020 investments at today's valuation?

Hardly any difference. The difference was very minor. I was aghast. Here, for 9 months I have played the role of an active fund manager. And I now realise that had I gone sleep for 9 months and woken up today, I would have been no worse off. That's quite humbling.

My time spent managing investments were an utter waste. I hope I atleast booked a good amount of capital losses (short term and long term) which would be useful while filling taxes for future years.

Moving on from finance to other things (such as social interactions), I wonder whether the same thing is true. Would my absence (and hence my presence) be irrelevant to others I interact with?

That's a scary thought. Is this common or usual? I mean the tendency to arrogate to ourselves a whole lot of efficacy or productivity when the reality is that the universe outside doesn't give a sh** (as was the case with my finance)?

If someone moves your cheese, is the best decision to just stay put? Rolling stone and moss and all that, huh?

There was one thing which I made a difference to. My emotions - I felt a sense of purpose with all the things I did in the last 9 months. That is a thing internal to me. By an external yardstick what I did counted for hardly anything. Is this the purpose of emotions and activity? To feel happy, sad or angry at minutae?

Perhaps the truth is that some few things we do do make a difference in the universe. The rest don't.