Thanks guys, you are always quick to jump in and offer support. But I really want to throw my desk out the five story window.
So many feelings. Painful, eh?
Sorry about that. Good job for not throwing out the desk, though. Same for not throwing out your stock allocation.
But I am still not where I was before the correction!
So? You're not supposed to win that fast.More empathetically: KTG, it does in fact delight me that you check in with us and are holding the course. It is concerning to hear how difficult this is for now. I hope the feelings re market moves calm down soon. You can do the right thing (which is nothing, as you now well know) regardless, but I feel for you.
You need a new measuring stick for success. Whether the market is up or down in the few months since you invested your main chunk of change is irrelevant. That's money with a long term measurement period, so only long term measurements are relevant. You won't have any long term measurements for 5 or 10 years or so. Until then, may I suggest:
1. Any day you left your investments alone is a win. You may celebrate with one victory dance, or a gleeful remark in an appropriate thread or journal.
2. Any day you added more savings to your investments according to your wise investment plan is an even bigger win. Two victory dances or gleeful remarks.
3. Your worth as a person is not related to whether the market went up since the particular day you made an investment.
4. Your dignity and brilliance as an investor is not related o whether the market went up since the particular day you made an investment.
5. Until you find a more entertaining replacement for pondering whether the Mr. Market has gratified your urge to find self worth as The Investor Whose Stock Went Up, you may consider yourself the Michael Jordan of investing for having left your money alone after dropping a reasonable portion into a reasonable equity investment.
6. Assuming you are still saving, maybe focus on tracking the amount of new money invested.
7. I think a lot of people find more peace by establishing a long term plan ("reaching FI takes me 9 more years, assuming I keep investing 50% of take pay") and monitoring success with meeting that goal. What FIRE-creating actions are you taking?
8. At least by doing 7, you can find subgoals that you can control, such as savings %, whether you performed responsibly today in area X that you identified as the key next step, and so on.
TL;DR - Find a goal you can control. Focus on that so the stocks have time to mature without interference.