How much time do I need to spend researching and monitoring investments?

How you choose to invest your money is an important decision, but it doesn’t need to be a time consuming one.

While choosing individual stocks can mean close monitoring to decide when to buy or sell, many other types of investments offer a much more hands-off approach at minimal costs.

In fact, choosing your investments and then giving them time to grow without interference is a tried-and-tested strategy to create returns, because historically, the stock market has risen over time. However, there is no guarantee markets will always recover from dips in the future.

You can save yourself time while investing by setting up automatic payments. If you plan to invest a certain amount each month, you can set up a Direct Debit from your bank account to automatically feed your account. You can then set up a regular investment, so you buy a fund or stock on the same day each month and repeat with no extra effort.

Many first-time investors start with funds

The least time-consuming way to go about investing is by choosing a fund as you don’t decide what goes in and out of a fund.

A fund is a basket of stocks or bonds that are held as a package deal. This helps to spread your risks across lots of different things. Even if one stock or bond in the portfolio does poorly, hopefully the other holdings in the fund will balance it out.

There are numerous types of funds. You can choose to invest in a fund with a focus on a specific region or sector, or you can choose something broader that covers a range of global businesses.

You can also choose between active or passive funds: active funds are managed by a person, while passive funds follow the investments in a specific index. For example, you can invest in a passive fund that tracks the FTSE 100, or a passive fund that tracks the MSCI World index if you want to invest in companies around the world.

The beauty of a fund is that any adjustments are made for you. If you’re invested in an active fund, the person in charge, called a fund manager, will make changes to what companies or bonds they invest in based on what they believe will do well in the future and will decide when it’s time to sell certain holdings.

A passive fund also adjusts based on the decisions of the index they follow. For example, the FTSE 100 index is reshuffled once a quarter to account for changes to market valuations. Relevant passive funds are therefore refreshed to mirror the changes to the underlying index.

How often should I check on my investments?

While you can still check in occasionally, and make sure you’re happy with how your investments are performing, you don’t need to be making any forecasts about how you believe a company or bond will do in the future. Instead, your decision can be made on if your investments are performing in a way that will allow you to reach your goals.

Remember, markets fluctuate overtime, so it’s important to take a long-term perspective and avoid rushing to make decisions if you feel the market isn’t performing well. Even well-regarded funds will have times of tumult.

Two popular equity funds among AJ Bell DIY investors are the Fidelity Index World for passive funds, and Jupiter India for active funds. In the past 15 years, Fidelity Index World has returned 192% to its investors, while Jupiter India has returned 160.31%*.

Despite their popularity, both funds have had challenging periods in the past where investors would have needed to hold tight. For example, from the start of February to the end of March in 2020 as the global pandemic intensified, investors in Jupiter India would have lost about 30%, and investors in Fidelity Index World would have lost 25%, according to FE Fundinfo data.

If you had decided to pull out your money during this time, returns would have been hurt. But by riding out the tumult, investors saw the value of both funds move up again.

Instead of randomly checking on your investments, or only when you hear about big movements in the market through the news, a helpful way to keep track is to set a simple reminder for yourself once every three months or so to spend just 10 minutes checking in. If you’re satisfied, you can leave them alone again until your next reminder.

Investing in shares requires a bit more work

Many investors, even those that have lots of experience in the market, are comfortable investing their money solely through funds. But for those that would like to become much more hands-on with their investments, stocks can provide that flexibility. This can be a riskier way to invest if your stocks are not diversified. Even the funds with the smallest number of holdings usually hold over 20 companies. Many indices have thousands.

Certain investors choose to put most of their money in funds and hold a few stocks on the side.

If you’re investing in stocks, there may be a few more things to keep an eye on. This can include company results, which are released twice a year for UK-listed stocks and on a quarterly basis in the US, as well as geopolitical events which may affect the industry. There are also indeterminable factors that will impact the share price of your holding.

Even with big name companies, share prices can move fast. Take Tesla: At the end of 2024, its share price peaked to over $450 per share. But in March 2025, it fell to less than $250 per share before starting to recover. Just because Tesla is a household name doesn’t mean its shares will always travel upwards.

While stocks can create big rewards, it can also be a significant risk for your money, as well as a larger time commitment to follow the wellbeing of the company.

When starting out with stock investing, you may want to try your hand with a smaller sum of money and put the rest of your savings into something with a larger amount of diversification and less maintenance.

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