On Sleep and Markets
How portfolio anxiety affects your sleep and your decisions.
On Sleep and Markets
Key Takeaways
- Portfolio anxiety keeps cortisol elevated at night, triggering a vicious cycle: poor sleep leads to worse decisions, which creates more anxiety, which worsens sleep further
- Sleep-deprived investors take bigger risks after losses, hold losers longer, and sell winners too quickly. The 2% drop keeping you awake leads to panic selling
- No portfolio checking for two hours before bed is the single most powerful intervention, combined with goal-based tracking instead of daily performance
The 3 AM Spiral
You wake at 3 AM. Your portfolio intrudes. Markets are down 2%. You check your phone. Financial news consumes two hours. Your heart pounds. You can’t fall back asleep.
That anxiety is doing the opposite of what it’s trying to do. It’s trying to protect your money and it’s actually destroying it.
How Your Nervous System Hijacks Your Sleep
Your nervous system is wired for survival. When threats to your resources appear, it treats them the same way it treats threats to your life. Whether it’s a charging bear or a 2% market correction, your amygdala detects danger. Cortisol and adrenaline flood your system. Your brain stays alert, searching for threat.
Normally, cortisol declines through the day, hitting its lowest point around midnight. But portfolio anxiety keeps it elevated. Every check during bad news sends a fresh threat signal to your amygdala. You’re locked in a cycle stealing your sleep.
Your brain learns patterns. Check during bad news repeatedly, and your brain associates checking itself with threat. Eventually the thought of checking triggers stress.
The Decision-Making Catastrophe
Sleep deprivation doesn’t just make you tired. It dismantles your judgment around risk and money.
Missing sleep quiets your prefrontal cortex (rational decision-making) and amplifies your amygdala. You become more fearful, more impulsive, worse at planning.
Sleep-deprived investors take bigger risks after losses, hold losers longer, sell winners too quickly. That 2% market drop keeping you awake? When you’re sleep-deprived, you panic sell into it. Your long-term plan vanishes. One bad decision creates losses. Losses amplify anxiety. Anxiety worsens sleep. Worse sleep produces worse decisions.
You’re spiraling downward, and the thing trying to protect your money is destroying it.
Four Changes That Actually Work
1. No Portfolio Checking Before Bed
This is the single most powerful intervention: no portfolio checking for two hours before bed. Not after 9 PM or two hours before sleep, whichever comes first.
Stop flooding your system with threat signals in the evening. Your cortisol needs to decline naturally. When threat signals stop, your nervous system relaxes. Melatonin production resumes. Your body remembers how to sleep.
The market is closed anyway. Your money is exactly as safe at 11 PM as it was at 4 PM. But checking tells your nervous system the threat is real and immediate.
Leave your phone in another room. Use app blockers. Tell someone you’re doing it so you stay accountable. Just make checking harder than sleeping.
2. Replace Checking with Calming Rituals
Your brain likes replacing one behavior with another rather than just stopping. If checking gave you a sense of control, you need a different ritual that does the same thing.
Write down your investment plan and goals. Remind yourself why you made your allocation decisions. This engages your rational brain and quiets your emotional one.
Try a five-minute body scan meditation. Start with your toes and move upward, relaxing each part. This activates your parasympathetic nervous system, your body’s built-in tranquilizer.
Journal one thing you’re grateful for. Gratitude suppresses cortisol. Your brain cannot generate both gratitude and threat at the same time.
3. Make Your Sleep Environment Portfolio-Proof
Keep your phone out of arm’s reach. Studies show even a visible phone reduces sleep quality, as your brain stays partly allocated to noticing it.
Keep your bedroom cool (around 65 to 68 degrees), dark, and quiet. Skip screens an hour before bed. Blue light suppresses melatonin, but more importantly, screens are where market anxiety lives.
Most portfolio apps are designed to trigger checking. Real-time percentage changes, highlighted winners and losers. Every open delivers a small dopamine hit.
Instead, use goal-based tracking. Forget daily fluctuations. Focus on one question: am I on track?
Say your goal is €1.2 million by age 65. You’re 35, consistently investing, with 30 years ahead. Your goal tracker doesn’t show daily noise. It shows: are you on track? Your portfolio today is €425,000. Your target for your age and timeline is €400,000. You’re ahead. You’re on track.
Market up or down doesn’t change whether you’re on track unless something catastrophic happens.
The Shift That Matters
Notice what happens to your nervous system with goal-based tracking. Instead of getting triggered by short-term market moves, you get reassurance about something that matters: your real financial security. You might check this once a month or quarterly, not daily.
That’s a different person with a different nervous system.
A well-rested investor makes better decisions. No panic selling. No obsessive checking. Market dips are noise, not threats.
You don’t need to change your personality. You need different choices. Different tools. Different metrics.
Tonight, if markets have been keeping you up, put your phone in another room. Do one of those calming rituals. Let your cortisol decline naturally. Tomorrow, consider whether you’re measuring your progress the way that actually matters: your goal, your timeline, your security.
That’s the only thing that actually matters. Everything else is noise.
Gallio shows you progress toward your actual goals, not daily price swings. When you know you’re on track, the noise loses its power to keep you awake.
On Sleep and Markets
Key Takeaways
- Portfolio anxiety keeps cortisol elevated at night, triggering a vicious cycle: poor sleep leads to worse decisions, which creates more anxiety, which worsens sleep further
- Sleep-deprived investors take bigger risks after losses, hold losers longer, and sell winners too quickly. The 2% drop keeping you awake leads to panic selling
- No portfolio checking for two hours before bed is the single most powerful intervention, combined with goal-based tracking instead of daily performance
The 3 AM Spiral
You wake at 3 AM. Your portfolio intrudes. Markets are down 2%. You check your phone. Financial news consumes two hours. Your heart pounds. You can’t fall back asleep.
That anxiety is doing the opposite of what it’s trying to do. It’s trying to protect your money and it’s actually destroying it.
How Your Nervous System Hijacks Your Sleep
Your nervous system is wired for survival. When threats to your resources appear, it treats them the same way it treats threats to your life. Whether it’s a charging bear or a 2% market correction, your amygdala detects danger. Cortisol and adrenaline flood your system. Your brain stays alert, searching for threat.
Normally, cortisol declines through the day, hitting its lowest point around midnight. But portfolio anxiety keeps it elevated. Every check during bad news sends a fresh threat signal to your amygdala. You’re locked in a cycle stealing your sleep.
Your brain learns patterns. Check during bad news repeatedly, and your brain associates checking itself with threat. Eventually the thought of checking triggers stress.
The Decision-Making Catastrophe
Sleep deprivation doesn’t just make you tired. It dismantles your judgment around risk and money.
Missing sleep quiets your prefrontal cortex (rational decision-making) and amplifies your amygdala. You become more fearful, more impulsive, worse at planning.
Sleep-deprived investors take bigger risks after losses, hold losers longer, sell winners too quickly. That 2% market drop keeping you awake? When you’re sleep-deprived, you panic sell into it. Your long-term plan vanishes. One bad decision creates losses. Losses amplify anxiety. Anxiety worsens sleep. Worse sleep produces worse decisions.
You’re spiraling downward, and the thing trying to protect your money is destroying it.
Four Changes That Actually Work
1. No Portfolio Checking Before Bed
This is the single most powerful intervention: no portfolio checking for two hours before bed. Not after 9 PM or two hours before sleep, whichever comes first.
Stop flooding your system with threat signals in the evening. Your cortisol needs to decline naturally. When threat signals stop, your nervous system relaxes. Melatonin production resumes. Your body remembers how to sleep.
The market is closed anyway. Your money is exactly as safe at 11 PM as it was at 4 PM. But checking tells your nervous system the threat is real and immediate.
Leave your phone in another room. Use app blockers. Tell someone you’re doing it so you stay accountable. Just make checking harder than sleeping.
2. Replace Checking with Calming Rituals
Your brain likes replacing one behavior with another rather than just stopping. If checking gave you a sense of control, you need a different ritual that does the same thing.
Write down your investment plan and goals. Remind yourself why you made your allocation decisions. This engages your rational brain and quiets your emotional one.
Try a five-minute body scan meditation. Start with your toes and move upward, relaxing each part. This activates your parasympathetic nervous system, your body’s built-in tranquilizer.
Journal one thing you’re grateful for. Gratitude suppresses cortisol. Your brain cannot generate both gratitude and threat at the same time.
3. Make Your Sleep Environment Portfolio-Proof
Keep your phone out of arm’s reach. Studies show even a visible phone reduces sleep quality, as your brain stays partly allocated to noticing it.
Keep your bedroom cool (around 65 to 68 degrees), dark, and quiet. Skip screens an hour before bed. Blue light suppresses melatonin, but more importantly, screens are where market anxiety lives.
Most portfolio apps are designed to trigger checking. Real-time percentage changes, highlighted winners and losers. Every open delivers a small dopamine hit.
Instead, use goal-based tracking. Forget daily fluctuations. Focus on one question: am I on track?
Say your goal is €1.2 million by age 65. You’re 35, consistently investing, with 30 years ahead. Your goal tracker doesn’t show daily noise. It shows: are you on track? Your portfolio today is €425,000. Your target for your age and timeline is €400,000. You’re ahead. You’re on track.
Market up or down doesn’t change whether you’re on track unless something catastrophic happens.
The Shift That Matters
Notice what happens to your nervous system with goal-based tracking. Instead of getting triggered by short-term market moves, you get reassurance about something that matters: your real financial security. You might check this once a month or quarterly, not daily.
That’s a different person with a different nervous system.
A well-rested investor makes better decisions. No panic selling. No obsessive checking. Market dips are noise, not threats.
You don’t need to change your personality. You need different choices. Different tools. Different metrics.
Tonight, if markets have been keeping you up, put your phone in another room. Do one of those calming rituals. Let your cortisol decline naturally. Tomorrow, consider whether you’re measuring your progress the way that actually matters: your goal, your timeline, your security.
That’s the only thing that actually matters. Everything else is noise.
Gallio shows you progress toward your actual goals, not daily price swings. When you know you’re on track, the noise loses its power to keep you awake.