Checking my US stock account at three in the morning has become a bad habit

Staying up late for the bell in New York

I remember when I first opened my overseas brokerage account. It felt like I was finally getting access to the real deal after years of just staring at the domestic KOSPI charts that seemed to move sideways forever. At the time, I was pretty convinced that buying into something like SOXL or TQQQ was going to be the shortcut I needed. I spent way too much time refreshing the app at 2:00 AM, watching the red and blue numbers flicker. It’s funny now, but back then, I thought those 2x or 3x leveraged ETFs were just a sophisticated way to play the market. I told my friends about it like I had discovered some secret, but looking back, I was mostly just exhausted from staying up all night.

The messy reality of the ISA account changes

Things got complicated when the government started talking about changing the ISA account rules. I had been using mine to hold some broad overseas index ETFs, thinking the tax benefits would eventually add up over a decade or two. Then the news hit that they were capping the maturity extensions. It felt like someone moved the goalposts while I was in the middle of a game. I spent a whole Saturday afternoon comparing whether it made sense to just close the account and move everything to a direct brokerage account instead. Dealing with the D+2 settlement cycles and the mental math of currency exchange fees started to feel more like a chore than an investment strategy. I didn’t even end up moving the money; I just let it sit there, feeling slightly annoyed every time I logged in.

The constant cycle of micro-adjustments

I used to be obsessed with those ‘cash-equivalent’ ETFs that everyone was talking about for a while, just to park my idle funds. It seemed safe enough. But then I’d look at the price of SOXL or some other tech-heavy ticker and get restless again. The volatility is constant. I remember a specific Tuesday when I sold some shares in the morning, thinking I’d be smart and pull the cash out to cover some expenses, only to realize I had miscalculated the settlement timing. That specific frustration—staring at a balance that wasn’t ‘settled’ yet—really killed the mood for a few days. You read these articles about how ‘productive’ investment is supposed to be, but in practice, it’s mostly just dealing with administrative friction.

Why I stopped checking the news so often

There’s this constant noise about which broker is better or what the latest tax policy tweak means for the average person. I honestly don’t know anymore. I look at my portfolio and it’s a mix of things I bought because I liked the ticker name and things I bought because someone on a forum said it was a ‘must-have.’ Some of it is down 30%, some of it is up, and it rarely feels like a strategic triumph. I think I spent about $5,000 on those initial tech ETFs, and honestly, the stress of tracking them probably wasn’t worth the return. Now, I mostly just leave the app alone for a few weeks at a time. It’s less stressful, though I still get that itch to look whenever the market news gets loud again.

Unresolved feelings about the whole thing

I’m still not sure if I should have just stuck to index funds or if the risk was even worth it. The thrill of seeing a 5% gain in a single day is addictive, but the gut-punch of a 10% drop on a Friday night is a miserable way to start a weekend. I haven’t closed the account, but I also haven’t added much to it lately. Sometimes I think about transferring it all to a more boring, set-it-and-forget-it account at a different firm, but then I think about the paperwork involved. So, for now, it just stays as it is—a slightly messy collection of positions that I look at when I can’t sleep.