I check mine obsessively, always weighing up my number of mitzvos and comparing them to my number of averas.
At the moment, these two sides of the ledger are dead even.
Some people are tempted to check their stock portfolio every five minutes. Others don’t want to look at it ever. Should you check it and, if so, how often? I think the Talmud has some relevant advice (Chullin 105a):
Shmuel said: About this, I am like vinegar the son of wine compared to my father. My father would inspect his fields twice a day but I only inspect mine once a day. Shmuel is consistent with his opinion because he said: He who checks on his property once a day will find a silver coin (i.e. will profit).
According to Shmuel, you need to check on your fields at least once a day, preferably twice. This is true even if you have professionals working the fields and overseeing them. Rashi (ad loc., sv. sayer, mishkakh) explains that you have to check on your fields to see if there is anything you can fix. As the subsequent story in the passage makes clear, your overseers might not be paying sufficient attention to the work or might even be stealing from you. That is why you need to personally inspect the fields at least once a day.
ETAN WRITES: It also sounds like it is forbidden to make yourself poor as this will be a burden to the community. So what does that say about people that just want to be supported for the rest of their life and not get jobs? Are they allowed to ignore their financial responsibilities to learn their whole life?
CHARLIE HALL WRITES: Since last August I’ve been checking my portfolio about every six weeks or so. I just checked it yesterday (Sunday); the previous check had been 3/7/2009. Before then I read the summary statements once a year. My net worth is now about 4% higher than it was back in August. This is because I ignored everyone’s advice and put almost all my money into fixed income investments. I just could not figure out what the stock and bond markets were up to and thought that it felt too much like gambling to put much into either. I truly think checking daily would be a waste of time and energy.
MICHA WRITES: Pragmatic advice – overchecking a long-term investment causes MORE error, not less. As per Jasmine and "stocks". If you check too often, you end up making long term decisions off short-term changes that tend to iron themselves out. And you will miss more often than hit. (I have yet to get a 401k booklet in which the firm’s HR doesn’t warn you about this.)
Second, Gil, you’re assuming that the frequency is given in days, not in variability. Perhaps one should check based on volatility — every time the probability of losing n% (or missing an opportunity to make n% "a penny saved..") is reached.
