Investing term
What is Review cadence?
How often you sit down and look at the portfolio with intent — typically annual or semi-annual, deliberately not more.
Review cadence is how often you deliberately sit down to examine your portfolio — typically annually or semi-annually, and pointedly not daily. Checking too often invites emotional, reactive decisions; checking on a sensible, infrequent schedule keeps you informed without feeding the urge to tinker.
The logic is behavioural. The more often you look, the more you see the short-term noise — the down days, the scary headlines, the volatility — and the more tempted you are to act on it, usually to your detriment. A deliberate, infrequent review cadence lets you check that your plan is on track, rebalance if needed, and account for any life changes, without exposing yourself to the daily churn that drives panic-selling and performance-chasing. It's the practical application of 'set and forget': engaged enough to stay on plan, detached enough to avoid being ruled by the market's moods. For long-term investors, an annual review is usually plenty.
The more often you look, the more short-term noise you see and the more tempted you are to react. A deliberate, infrequent review keeps you on plan and rebalanced — without feeding the urge to tinker.
For example
Instead of checking your portfolio daily and reacting to every dip, you review it once a year — confirming your plan is on track, rebalancing if needed, and otherwise leaving it alone.
Learn it by doing
That's Review cadence in theory — it clicks when you use it. Practise it hands-on in a free, interactive lesson (Stage 20, The Investor's Playbook).
Try the free lesson →Why it matters to you
Review cadence matters because how often you look at your portfolio directly affects how well you behave with it. Frequent checking exposes you to short-term noise and the emotional urge to act, which erodes returns, while a deliberate, infrequent cadence keeps you on plan without the temptation to meddle. Setting a sensible review schedule — and resisting the pull to check constantly — is a simple, powerful way to protect your returns from your own reactions.
⚠ Checking constantly and reacting to noise
The more often you check your portfolio, the more short-term volatility and scary headlines you see, and the greater the temptation to act on them — usually by panic-selling or performance-chasing. Constant monitoring feels responsible but tends to hurt returns, because it feeds emotional, reactive decisions. A deliberate, infrequent review cadence protects you from being ruled by the daily churn.