Here’s Why You Shouldn’t Check Your Portfolio Right Now

Market downdrafts tempt people to adjust their investments, but that’s not always a wise choice

If you logged on to your brokerage account today and wish you hadn’t, you’re not alone.

BlackRock Chief Executive Larry Fink said Monday the asset manager hasn’t received this many client calls since March 2020, when the pandemic was beginning.

Retail brokerages including Fidelity Investments had technical glitches Monday morning as traffic surged from people trying to check their portfolios and place trades.

Studies have found that the more people look at their 401(k)s, the lower their long-term returns are likely to be.

The S&P 500 drops on almost half of trading days, so checking your portfolio more often means you are more likely to see losses. And there have been lots of losses since President Trump rolled out a series of tariffs last week.

In just two trading days last week, the average 401(k) lost 7% of its value, according to Alight Solutions , which tracks employer retirement plans. Individual investors moved money out of stock-heavy target-date funds and into the relative safety of bonds and cash.

That’s understandable, but not necessarily wise. Here are some things financial advisers say to keep in mind right now:

Be realistic

Now that the S&P 500 is down almost 20% from its peak, many people are realizing that their risk tolerance isn’t as high as they thought it was when markets were up 20%, said Chelsea Ransom-Cooper, chief financial planning officer at Zenith Wealth Partners in New York.

“It’s a great time to level-set and reflect on what you’re comfortable with,” she said. However, if you decide to make changes, you should tweak a little at a time to avoid making emotional decisions you regret later, she said.

Sell strategically

In general, you should avoid the impulse to sell when the value of your investments falls, said Martin Lowenthal, financial adviser in Needham, Mass.

He has been telling his clients to stay the course and advising that they pull money from alternative sources such as life insurance plans if they need liquidity in the short-term.

“You shouldn’t be drawing from depressed assets if you have other places to go for income,” he said.

However, falling stock prices can create opportunities to save on taxes. If you find yourself with stocks or funds that are worth less than what you paid for them, you may be able to recognize the losses for tax purposes. Selling at a loss and reinvesting the money can help offset taxes on future capital gains while remaining invested in the market.

Buy cautiously

There may be reasons to add to investments, financial advisers say, especially if you have been sitting on cash. Cash losses value to inflation, which is expected to rise as companies digest new tariffs.

With markets starting to price in rate cuts , now might be a good time to lock in returns with fixed-rate products such as certificates of deposits or bonds, Ransom-Cooper said.

If you are younger and have a longer investment horizon, you can consider making small investments into the stock market at regular time intervals to take advantage of a potential rebound while managing risk.

“If you are concerned about inflation, you want to make sure that your money is at least trying to keep up,” she said.

Do nothing

This isn’t the first time the market has tested investors’ stomach for risk, and history says it won’t be the last. There was the financial crisis, then there was the pandemic, and “this time, it’s the tariff tantrum,” Lowenthal said.

“I’ve got full faith in the American economy to ride this out,” he said.

There has rarely, if ever, been so much tech talent available in the job market. Yet many tech companies say good help is hard to find.

What gives?

U.S. colleges more than doubled the number of computer-science degrees awarded from 2013 to 2022, according to federal data. Then came round after round of layoffs at Google, Meta, Amazon, and others.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts businesses will employ 6% fewer computer programmers in 2034 than they did last year.

All of this should, in theory, mean there is an ample supply of eager, capable engineers ready for hire.

But in their feverish pursuit of artificial-intelligence supremacy, employers say there aren’t enough people with the most in-demand skills. The few perceived as AI savants can command multimillion-dollar pay packages. On a second tier of AI savvy, workers can rake in close to $1 million a year .

Landing a job is tough for most everyone else.

Frustrated job seekers contend businesses could expand the AI talent pipeline with a little imagination. The argument is companies should accept that relatively few people have AI-specific experience because the technology is so new. They ought to focus on identifying candidates with transferable skills and let those people learn on the job.

Often, though, companies seem to hold out for dream candidates with deep backgrounds in machine learning. Many AI-related roles go unfilled for weeks or months—or get taken off job boards only to be reposted soon after.

Playing a different game

It is difficult to define what makes an AI all-star, but I’m sorry to report that it’s probably not whatever you’re doing.

Maybe you’re learning how to work more efficiently with the aid of ChatGPT and its robotic brethren. Perhaps you’re taking one of those innumerable AI certificate courses.

You might as well be playing pickup basketball at your local YMCA in hopes of being signed by the Los Angeles Lakers. The AI minds that companies truly covet are almost as rare as professional athletes.

“We’re talking about hundreds of people in the world, at the most,” says Cristóbal Valenzuela, chief executive of Runway, which makes AI image and video tools.

He describes it like this: Picture an AI model as a machine with 1,000 dials. The goal is to train the machine to detect patterns and predict outcomes. To do this, you have to feed it reams of data and know which dials to adjust—and by how much.

The universe of people with the right touch is confined to those with uncanny intuition, genius-level smarts or the foresight (possibly luck) to go into AI many years ago, before it was all the rage.

As a venture-backed startup with about 120 employees, Runway doesn’t necessarily vie with Silicon Valley giants for the AI job market’s version of LeBron James. But when I spoke with Valenzuela recently, his company was advertising base salaries of up to $440,000 for an engineering manager and $490,000 for a director of machine learning.

A job listing like one of these might attract 2,000 applicants in a week, Valenzuela says, and there is a decent chance he won’t pick any of them. A lot of people who claim to be AI literate merely produce “workslop”—generic, low-quality material. He spends a lot of time reading academic journals and browsing GitHub portfolios, and recruiting people whose work impresses him.

In addition to an uncommon skill set, companies trying to win in the hypercompetitive AI arena are scouting for commitment bordering on fanaticism .

Daniel Park is seeking three new members for his nine-person startup. He says he will wait a year or longer if that’s what it takes to fill roles with advertised base salaries of up to $500,000.

He’s looking for “prodigies” willing to work seven days a week. Much of the team lives together in a six-bedroom house in San Francisco.

If this sounds like a lonely existence, Park’s team members may be able to solve their own problem. His company, Pickle, aims to develop personalised AI companions akin to Tony Stark’s Jarvis in “Iron Man.”

Overlooked

James Strawn wasn’t an AI early adopter, and the father of two teenagers doesn’t want to sacrifice his personal life for a job. He is beginning to wonder whether there is still a place for people like him in the tech sector.

He was laid off over the summer after 25 years at Adobe , where he was a senior software quality-assurance engineer. Strawn, 55, started as a contractor and recalls his hiring as a leap of faith by the company.

He had been an artist and graphic designer. The managers who interviewed him figured he could use that background to help make Illustrator and other Adobe software more user-friendly.

Looking for work now, he doesn’t see the same willingness by companies to take a chance on someone whose résumé isn’t a perfect match to the job description. He’s had one interview since his layoff.

“I always thought my years of experience at a high-profile company would at least be enough to get me interviews where I could explain how I could contribute,” says Strawn, who is taking foundational AI courses. “It’s just not like that.”

The trouble for people starting out in AI—whether recent grads or job switchers like Strawn—is that companies see them as a dime a dozen.

“There’s this AI arms race, and the fact of the matter is entry-level people aren’t going to help you win it,” says Matt Massucci, CEO of the tech recruiting firm Hirewell. “There’s this concept of the 10x engineer—the one engineer who can do the work of 10. That’s what companies are really leaning into and paying for.”

He adds that companies can automate some low-level engineering tasks, which frees up more money to throw at high-end talent.

It’s a dynamic that creates a few handsomely paid haves and a lot more have-nots.