What to look out for in senior scams Recognize Common Scams Impersonation Scams: Callers pretend to be from a trusted organization (e.g., IRS, Social Security Administration, tech companies) to trick you into sending money or disclosing personal Lottery or Prize Scams: You’re told you’ve won a prize but need to pay taxes or fees to claim Threatening Scams: Callers threaten legal action, arrest, or other penalties unless you pay a…
IPS In The News
Does It Make Sense to Hire a Realtor?
Does it make sense to hire a realtor? If you hire a realtor to help you sell your house, most of them will charge you a commission between 5% and 6%. So, why do realtors charge so much? Services Provided: Realtors offer a range of services that can justify their fees, including market analysis to price the property correctly, marketing the property, negotiating with buyers or sellers, and navigating complex…
How To Find A Good Estate Attorney and Craft A Quality Financial Plan
How to find a good estate attorney and craft a quality financial plan The cost of setting up a trust varies widely depending on several factors, including the complexity of the trust, the assets involved, geographic location, and the attorney’s fees if you choose to use one for the setup. Generally: Simple Trusts: For straightforward trusts, such as a basic revocable living trust, the costs can range from $1,200 to…
The Best Kept Secret… An Introduction to IPS Custom Structured Notes (Index Treasury Notes)
The Best Kept Secret… An Intoduction to IPS custom strucutred notes Index treasury notes The Investment Secret of the Pros Since the first neanderthals realized that you can store grain over the winter and have more to plant next spring, people from all walks of life have puzzled over the problem of maximizing their investment returns while minimizing, or completely avoiding, losses. This is the “financial-planning paradox.” The Oracle of…
The Ideal Investment for Today’s Market Environment
“In today’s uncertain market environment, everybody would want to put certainty back in their investment portfolio. You can’t get more certainty than U.S. Treasuries and exchange-traded options to deliver the peace of mind we all want.” The truth is that nobody knows what the market will do, so let’s do this. Invest most of our portfolio in one-year U.S. Treasury Bills and use the future interest today to buy index options giving…
Should You Buy the Dip?
Should You Buy The Dip? What everybody wants to know Is this a good time to buy the dip, hold your current positions, or go to cash? I’ve been in this business for over 30 years, and I have learned some tough lessons: Market timing is a fool’s game. People confuse being lucky for being good. Buying and holding for the long term is a strategy that, near retirement, can…
Hedging Oil Volatility
Facebook Twitter Youtube West Texas Intermediate crude is up more than 60% in 2021 recently breaking the 2014 high. Many traders are speculating that with ESG investments hitting 1.65 trillion in 2020 and the Covid-19 pandemic many companies have reduced their CAPEX. Unfortunately, these lower CAPEX levels appear to be insufficient to deliver the volumes of oil and gas needed to maintain market stability****. This underinvestment in new exploration according…
What Makes a Great Financial Plan?
I have found over my 30 + years in the financial community that most financial plans are very plain vanilla templates. Yes, all financial plans contain the six tenants of Tax Planning, Insurance Planning, Retirement Planning, Estate Planning, Cash Flow Planning, and Investment Planning. Most planners have their views like should you buy whole life universal or term insurance? Are annuities better than mutual funds? Should you hold your assets…
The Best Looking Horse in the Glue Factory
A mantra being spun by the mainstream media is that, “The Democrats will print money wildly causing the dollar to crash, causing hyper-inflation which will put the market into a tailspin not seen since 1922”. Since the election, I have gotten a number of calls from clients concerned about the echoes of a 1922 Weimar Germany happening in the U.S. This is everyone’s favorite hyperinflation proxy because it happened in…
Is Herd Mentality Driving Commodity Hedging?
I recently read an article detailing how European airlines lost $4.66 Billion* last year through poorly managed fuel hedges. As a hedging practitioner who teaches commodity and financial markets hedging at the University of Colorado in Denver, I found this to be a textbook example for explaining to my students why the hedges used by many companies are poorly placed and potentially dangerous. If the hedge used by the European…
The Short-Volatility Trade Is Now So Big It’s Starting to Break
As Featured in Bloomberg Markets By Luke Kawa and Yakob Peterseil – Bloomberg Markets – October 22, 2019,6:02 AM MDT – featuring Dominick Paoloni, IPS CIO & Founder, IPSAX Portfolio Manager & Patrick Hennessy, Head Trader, IPS Strategic Capital – One of the hottest strategies of the bull market for stocks may be getting too popular for its own good, placing billions of dollars and a slew of money managers at…
Is It Time To Reconsider Short Vol?
As Published In Dominick Paoloni, CIMA® CIO & Founder Portfolio Manager, IPSAX By Elinor Comlay Global risks are rising, the Cboe’s Volatility Index is whipsawing and yet selling options is still more popular than buying. For sure, buying options means managing carry costs. But as the ongoing popularity of short vol strategies and the weight of options selling contributes to compression of the volatility risk premium, it could be time…
