While starting early this year and ending up with some investments moves up until the last month alongside DCA, I have ended up checking quite often the crypto prices and watching the market. One day I was up, the other I was down and there were swings left and right. And today I have realized that I was losing time and going through different emotions by doing that, considering that these investments are for long term with the aim to book profits in the next bull run. So instead of watching the market like a hawk, as crypto is a game of patience I have decided to focus more on other things and park this bad habit. As I am continuing my DCA, I will still be connected to the market and to how the projects are evolving, but I will not lose so much time like a day trader that I am not.
I will stop watching every move in the market
As I said, the first thing I want to change is how often I check prices. There is a difference between staying informed and constantly watching the market swings. As I have a long-term strategy, most of those short-term movements are simply noise and are even affecting me emotionally thinking that I could have bought cheaper (sometimes). Even if we are not in either a bear or bull cycle, the crypto prices move quickly, social media amplifies every pump and dump and suddenly I find myself checking the portfolio several times a day without actually doing anything useful. I don't need nor want to predict tomorrow's price, but rather to be positioned for where I believe the market can be several months or years from now.
DCA makes patience easier
This is where DCA becomes particularly useful for me. Instead of trying to find the perfect entry point, I can simply continue allocating a predefined amount at regular intervals up until a certain threshold (this is very important!). Some purchases will happen when prices are higher, while others will happen when prices are lower but all between specific intervals. I won't know which ones are the best until much later, but that's precisely the point.
DCA removes part of the emotional decision making from the process. I don't need to wake up and wonder whether today is the perfect day to buy. I have a plan and I follow it. It also changes the way I look at corrections. Instead of immediately seeing a red portfolio as something bad, I can see lower prices as potentially better accumulation opportunities, assuming the chosen projects are still worth investing in.
I am trying to optimize my time and mental health
The biggest realization for me is that constantly watching crypto prices doesn't actually make me a better investor. It mostly consumes attention and when there are swings in the red even my mental health and wellbeing. And such times I could spend them with the family or in my professional job, but also creating something new, learning, writing, working on HivePulse, engaging with the community and building.
In the end I'd rather have my investments working quietly in the background while I focus on things I can actually control. I will still follow important developments, check how projects are progressing and adjust my strategy when something fundamentally changes. But checking whether my portfolio is up or down today doesn't deserve that much of my attention.
Maybe this is one of the hardest parts of investing: doing nothing. We are constantly encouraged to act. Buy this, sell that, rotate into another narrative, catch the next pump, don't miss the opportunity. Crypto makes this even stronger because the market never really sleeps. But if my objective is the next bull market rather than the next few hours, I don't need to participate in every movement. This is why crypto is actually a game of patience so I've just decided to wait and focus more on everything else happening in my life.
