My Son Asked Why I Stare at Charts and I Had No Good Answer

Tuesday night, right after dinner, my son climbed onto the couch and leaned his whole weight on my shoulder. I was doing what I always do around 8:30 PM: refreshing my brokerage app, squinting at red candles, pretending I had a reason to be there.

He looked at the screen and said, “Appa, why are you looking at that again?” I opened my mouth. Nothing useful came out. I made a sound that was halfway between “uhh” and a cough, and he waited for me like a small, patient interviewer.

The honest answer I did not give

The true answer was embarrassing. I was not researching. I was not rebalancing. I was not doing anything a serious investor would recognize as work. I was just checking, the way some people check the fridge knowing full well nothing new has appeared since the last time they looked.

If I had been brave, I would have said: “Appa is looking at numbers that already happened. They will not change because I stare at them. But staring makes me feel like I am doing something.” A six-year-old would have understood that perfectly. He is an expert on doing something so you do not have to sit with a feeling.

What I actually said

What I actually said was, “Appa is checking work stuff.” Which is a lie dressed up in a tie. He nodded the way kids nod when they know you are not telling the whole truth but they love you anyway. Then he asked if we could read the dinosaur book. I closed the app faster than I have ever closed it in my life.

I wish I could say I handled the whole moment like a calm adult. I did not. Halfway through the book I was still thinking about my portfolio, which is a fact I am not proud to type out loud.

Eben’s note: If I cannot explain what I am doing on my phone to a six-year-old in one sentence, I probably should not be doing it.

The screen-time math I have been avoiding

I did a rough count the next morning on the train. I open my brokerage app maybe fifteen times a day. Most of those opens last twenty to forty seconds. That is somewhere around eight to ten minutes of pure chart-staring, every day, for years.

Ten minutes sounds small. Multiplied by a week, it is more than an hour. Multiplied by a year, it is the length of a small vacation. And none of those minutes helped my returns. The trades that actually mattered were decided once, usually on a weekend, usually after a conversation with my wife.

Meanwhile, my son remembers every single time I picked up my phone during a book.

What a six-year-old taught me about investing

He did not mean to teach me anything. He just asked a simple question. But “why are you looking at that again” is the exact question a good investment coach would ask, only the coach would charge a lot more and use worse grammar.

Here is what his question actually surfaced:

• Checking is not investing. It is a nervous habit wearing investing’s uniform.
• If my plan is sound, more glances do not improve it. They only erode my attention for the people in the room.
• The cost of a bad market day is usually paper. The cost of a distracted bedtime is real.
• My kid is forming a mental image of what adulthood looks like, and right now it looks like a tired man holding a glowing rectangle.

That last one is the one that actually stings.

The small rule I am trying this week

I am not going to pretend I am deleting the app. I tried that once and reinstalled it in a panic during a CPI print, which is a sentence I am also not proud of. Instead, I am trying something smaller and more honest: no brokerage app between dinner and bedtime. That is roughly 7 PM to 9 PM on weekdays.

The markets I care about are closed during those hours in Korea anyway. The Asian session does not need my supervision. My son, on the other hand, actively requests it, usually in the form of a dinosaur book or a request for water he does not drink.

If I break the rule, the penalty is that I have to tell him the real reason I opened the app. I suspect I will open it a lot less when the price of opening it is a conversation with a very honest six-year-old.

What I am taking from this

My son did not catch me doing something terrible. He caught me doing something pointless, which is almost worse, because pointless is the thing that quietly steals years. I want him to remember an Appa who looked up when he leaned on my shoulder, not one who finished checking a chart first.

The portfolio will be fine without my staring. The kid on my shoulder is the one appreciating in value I actually care about. That is not a financial strategy, and it is not investment advice. It is just what I figured out on a Tuesday because a small person asked a fair question.

Nothing here is investment advice. Markets carry real risk, and what works for one person may not fit another. Please make your own decisions, ideally while your kid is asleep.

Tags: #parenting #investing #worklife #coding #dailyblog #Eben