This article was first published in the Globe and Mail on January 11, 2025. It is being republished with permission.

by Tom Bradley

To start 2025, I want to focus on the theme of this column: cutting through the noise.

More than ever, it’s easy to let the amount of information out there overwhelm you. At times it feels like the volume is turned up to 10, and everything is urgent. Some of it is important to how you live your day-to-day life. Some is fun and entertaining. But much of it is just clogging your neural pathways.

A sticky on my computer monitor quotes a Farnam Street newsletter and reads “Attention isn’t free. It’s the most valuable thing you spend.” With respect to your investment process, I have some suggestions about how you can allocate a larger share of your 2025 attention budget to where it will matter the most.

Finding time

First, you need to find time, and there’s some low-hanging fruit. In general, try to devote less to informational inputs that have little chance of being right and/or have no impact on your long-term returns.

Things like analyses of monthly economic data (that’s inevitably revised next month), the political machinations in Ottawa and Washington, the tone of the U.S. Federal Reserve chairman’s last interview, and short-term market moves and predictions.

You might find a few minutes every day and hours per month if you stop checking your daily portfolio value. Historically, stock markets are up about half the trading days, down a little less than half, and flat 2 to 3 per cent of the time. None of these outcomes are relevant to your results.

I’m not saying you shouldn’t pay attention to the news, but as an investor, you don’t want to be consumed by something that isn’t going to have an impact. In other words, be macro-aware, not macro-obsessed.

Allocating attention

The first place to gain more focus is where it all starts: saving. Putting money aside to invest is the most important input for wealth creation. The size of monthly contributions to your portfolio is key to how much financial flexibility you’ll have in retirement.

Saving isn’t something you think about daily, but finding the right balance between spending, paying down debt and investing deserves your utmost attention. The outcomes are profoundly different between holding appreciating assets that compound in value versus servicing loans (used to buy experiences and depreciating assets) that compound against you.

For capital already invested, your focus needs to be on how it will be diversified across asset types, industries, geographies, and currencies. Getting the right strategic asset mix, or SAM, should take priority over deciding which bank or tech stock to own. It’s by far the biggest dial on your investment dashboard.

At least once a year, you should review your SAM to see if it’s still appropriate. That means pulling everything together (bank accounts, investments, pension plans, and real estate) to see what your personal pie chart looks like. How much of your net worth is in GICs, bonds, stocks and condos? Is one theme, such as U.S. tech or Canadian banks, disproportionately large? These questions are especially important after dynamic periods in the market like we’ve just had.

Keeping an eye on fees is also important. As the CEO of your portfolio, you need to look at both sides of the ledger – returns and expenses. Your fees should be commensurate with what you’re receiving. If you’re getting a high level of advice and planning, a fair price is more than it is for someone who’s doing it all themselves.

CEOs also spend time evaluating their team, and you should too. It’s important to periodically assess your investment dealer or manager. Hopefully, the answer is "Yes" to the following questions. Is your provider well aligned with how you want to invest? Do you trust them to put your interests first? Are they charging a reasonable fee and looking for ways to reduce your cost of investing? And are they an expert in the most important investment factor: you. Do they know where your moral compass is pointing, what you’re trying to accomplish, and the idiosyncrasies of your investment personality? Whoever you work with has to dance to your tune.

Over all, there are easy wins in the battle for your attention. Spend less time on reaction and speculation and more on background and insight. Make sure you’re not skipping over important return drivers (saving, asset allocation, thorough monitoring) to get to the fun stuff (picking stocks, trading). And never forget, you’re the only one who can allocate your attention, a most precious and limited resource.