Well, this is a wild ride (just muttering to my n00b self)

[CluelessToshika]

Just buy when you can, try to make it a habit, and you will be fine.

One reason for my intense interest is that due to reasons I won't go into here, I've been pretty much zombie-ing through the past few years in a non-stop series of overlapping "interesting times", and the default course of action has been to keep saving money (which fortunately despite everything else hasn't been a problem) in case it's "needed". I'm now emerging somewhat dazed and bemused from said times and realised the "emergency fund" which has accumulated is great, should the emergency require e.g. buying a house in Tokyo at short notice, but is otherwise probably a sub-optimal portfolio structure, if you will execuse the fancy technical term. To be honest, I would rather have traded the money for less "interesting times" but we are where we are and there are plenty worse problems to have.

Another reason is my wife is expressing an interest in NISA, but has a mindset which is even more risk-averse than mine, so the more I'm confident with this stuff, the better things will be domestically. I've already stopped her idea of opening a NISA account with those nice friendly people at the post office, which is a start of sorts I guess.

I also look at my portfolio too regularly, but I don't mess about with it.

No intention of messing about with it, but it sure is amusing when my monkey brain is all "oh noeess!!1! My monies they iz disappearing!!1!"

Time is your main weapon, as I am sure you know.

"Time in the market, not timing the market".

I forget where I heard this.

Yeah, I've heard it before, it's all about converting aphorisms into personal convictions .

[Bubblegun]

After taking the plunge with this whole investing malarkey a couple of weeks back, I've been logging in every day to see how things are going (yes I know I should be doing "fire and forget", but being new to all this, I want to get a sense of what's going on) and after some encouraging initial gains on the "portfolio" (mostly eMaxis S&P and world) it was all in the red (or blue, dunno why SBI show losses as blue and gains as red), today it's just about back into positive territory. I'm well aware that this is a long game, but I can see how people get cold feet with this stuff.

Anyway, just venting , it's great that I've actually got to this point, my thanks to Ben/RetireJapan and everyone else contributing to the community .

I can empathize with you on this. Since the advent of the internet, it has made it so easy to look at stuff hour by hour, day by day, week to week blah blah. 30 years ago before internet banking got going, I just set up my bank deductions and forgot all about it. To see things today swing from 150,000 yen up one day and then 100,000 down the next can be a bit on the vomitus side. The problem is, this new NISA system has a built-in PANIC SELL button for the average Joe, Suzuki, or Tanaka to click, and I can see it's easy to panic to lock in what we KNOW WE HAVE. I'm not sure I could have held off during Black Wednesday, the dot com bubble, the 9/11 panic, and the financial crisis. covid crash, if I had all that easy internet access and a sell button staring me in the face. Honestly, I have no idea how much I need to retire, which adds a bit more complexity to any decision-making, which seems to loom closer. One consolation is....we are all on the same roller coaster ride. Kudos to those who can ignore it. Any advice on the secret to not peeking?

[sutebayashi]

I peek often, but don’t feel the urge to sell up at the sign of trouble.

Monex has some nice visualization of the value of your portfolio over time. On a daily basis it moves a little, but zooming out to monthly and yearly bars, my visualization looks kind of like your textbook tsumitate portfolio should - nicely growing bigger with a compounding tinge to it. I lump summed in a big DB payout in the middle, helping boost its size, and from this year instead of doing a lump sum with spare cash at the end of the year, I am doing larger monthly tsumitate instead.

So the portfolio looking as it was planned is one helpful thing.

Another thing perhaps is that I’m not only in equities, but also have reits, bonds, gold. Mostly equities though.

And another thing is, separately I trade fx and commodities. Because I am occupied trying to make 10,000 yen there, I guess I do not worry about my investment portfolio which is long term, swinging up or down 1,000,000
(After mentioning the Cocoa to our crypto friend the other day, I have had my eyes glued to that action)

[CluelessToshika]

Figures look a bit redder today, which is nice

But seriously, this process is all very helpful in moving away from my "humungous single emergency fund" model while keeping track of things properly and regularly. The aim is to update the spreadsheet once a month, but first I must get the spreadsheet organised and myself into the habit (which according to the dates in the spreadsheet I tried in 2021 but things got in the way).

Also spent a bit of time browsing the local bookstore and found an "illustrated guide to 確定申告 for dummies" kind of book with a section about taxing shares'n'stuff so I can wrap my head around that now (rather than at the end of next February).

[captainspoke]

It may be the figures/amounts you see that make you nervous?

If your account provides it (or use your spreadsheet to highlight it), try to look at any changes in percentage terms. That's also a better POV for when the amounts get larger.

[CluelessToshika]

Oh, the amounts aren't making me nervous, I'm just trying to get a feel for how the numbers are going up and down and round and round after having them sitting still in a bank account for many years. Actually one of the "little voices" in my head which was causing me to procrastinate kept asking me "how will we keep track of all this when it's no longer a handy number in the bank account?".

The SBI account does helpfully provide a percentage loss/gain figure, which is a nice indicator the money has been working harder than it was in the bank account (narrator: "so far").

[CluelessToshika]

'k, after consulting with my financial advisor, who comes in handy 750ml bottles at the supermarket outside the station, I've put 10 million into a random meme coin advertised on Twitter.

Oh sorry, wrong timeline, it actually went into the usual ETF suspects. Going to suck should I need to buy a reasonably classy 1DK in Yokohama at short notice, but I guess I'll have to take the hit.