Your portfolio without you – The Hindu

Imagine you are stranded in a desert with no broker’s app, no Internet. Buying/selling shares or mutual funds is out of the question. You can’t even check your investments.

“So what?” you may ask. “It is only a matter of a few hours.” But what if you stay there for a fortnight? You somehow learn to survive, perhaps by imitating a camel. Fortunately, the camel has no portfolio to worry about; its life is free from market crashes, share-price swings and needs no Internet or broker’s app.

Managing portfolio

You, however, have spent years carefully building a retirement portfolio. Now comes the acid test: what happens when you are not there to manage it? A crisis such as Chennai’s December 2015 deluge, the massive Spain-Portugal power outage of April 2025, or even a prolonged technological disruption can suddenly cut you off from financial life, leaving your own money beyond your reach.

There was also an unverified account doing the rounds on social media of an investor, unable to access their portfolio during the blackout, reportedly ‘travelled’ nearly 2,000 km from Madrid to Italy to execute trade.

Whether the story is true or not, that’s beyond our purview now. But, imagine crossing a border and travelling that far, just to reach your own investments and execute a single trade. Which brings us to the real question: if you cannot reach your portfolio for a couple of weeks, can the portfolio still do its job?

More vulnerable

A portfolio that requires you to watch it every day is vulnerable to more than just market volatility. A vacation abroad, hospitalisation, prolonged power cut owing to floods or natural disasters, lost phone, Internet outage, a few days of inattention or simply a few days away from the screen can have financial consequences, especially a loss. The Madrid investor’s story, whether true or not, is an extreme illustration: if being unable to press a button can force you to change your travel plans, perhaps the investment is demanding too much from its owner.

Swing trading

For instance, this is where swing trading often gets mistaken for investing. An investor may buy shares expecting to hold them for years, sometimes decades, to build wealth for life after retirement; a swing trader may buy them expecting to sell after a quicker price move over days or weeks. Neither is inherently wrong. But the second strategy makes access and timing part of the game. If you are stranded without a phone when the price reaches the level at which you intended to sell, your absence suddenly matters. That is not necessarily a bad strategy; it is simply a strategy that cannot be treated as a set-and-forget investment. It is not an investment at all in the first place.

Try this with your portfolio: mentally switch off your phone, Internet and broker account for a fortnight. Then look at each of your investments and ask this question: “What happens if I do nothing for a month?” If the answer is “nothing”, that may be a good sign. If the answer is “I must monitor, renew, switch, sell or make a decision”, you have discovered something important about the investment, and about your dependence on it.

The distinction is simple: some investments can patiently wait for you; others have a clock ticking in your absence. If an investment depends on you spotting a price, pressing a button or taking a decision at precisely the right time, your absence becomes a risk in itself. A long-term portfolio should ideally have fewer such moving parts. You may be away from your portfolio; your portfolio should not be away from its purpose. Think about it.