Tracking your portfolio too often ...

Are you one of those people who are waiting for the market to open everyday so that you can track the value of your portfolio. Or are you someone who is looking for a site like mantya.com so that you wont have to hit refresh on the ICICIDirect page. If yes then this is something that you must avoid since this is not very good for your health. The book Fooled by Randomness, which by the  way is a best seller suggests that the amount of pain inflicted when ones stock goes down is more than the amount of happiness one gains when ones stock goes up. Something directly from the book

You feel some pleasure when the performance is positive but not in the equivalent amount as the pain experienced when the performance is negative.

This is something I can personally vouch to, I used to track my portfolio minute by minute on ICICIDirect to see the small changes in my stock value. After reading this I decided not to do that and check my stock value only once a day after the markets have closed and it helps. Clearly you cannot do this if you are involved in some sort of margin trading and plan to make money out of the Intra day fluctuations in the market.