InvestmentSense

This issue of the is an eclectic showcase of authors who are raising the bar for investment research and investing clients’ assets.

By Margaret M. Towle, PhD, CIMA^®, CPWA^®, CAIA^® Editor-in-Chief,

This issue of the is an eclectic showcase of authors who are raising the bar for investment research and investing clients’ assets.

For example, Dominick Paoloni, in “A Study in Portfolio Diversification Using VIX Options,” is on a mission to find a dependable, low-cost tail protection hedge from events such as the 1987 crash. Paoloni asks: Can passive long volatility exposure be value-added over the long term with minimal cost? Or, in his own words, “Can the portfolio continuously wear a seat belt in all types of markets with a minimal cost to carry?” He concludes it can—by using an out-of-the-money laddered VIX strategy that can provide a strong diversifier with an acceptable cost of carry.

In “The Implied Longevity Curve,” Moshe Milevsky, Thomas Salisbury, and Alexander Chigodaev...

Welcome to this issue of IMCA’s Investments & Wealth Monitor, where our theme is institutional investing. But if your practice focuses on individuals, please keep reading. In practice the lines are blurred between the institutional and individual investor, and I think you will find plenty here to interest you.

For instance, socially responsible investing is front and center among many investment committees, as well as individual investors. In “Sustainable and Responsible Investing for the...

IMCA’s 2016 Annual Conference—ACE, April 17–20 in Orlando, provided three days of actionable insight into politics, markets, and the latest investing and wealth management trends impacting investors and advisors. Here are five must-read articles written about the conference.

1. Breaking down the “nastiest election of our lifetime.” If Donald Trump wins the presidential election, at least one person will be hoping for a windy inauguration day, writes Jeff Benjamin of . Greg Valliere, chief...

Cerulli Associates, the global analytics firm, does not anticipate a significant slowdown in rollover activity in the foreseeable future as a result of the Department of Labor’s (DOL) “Conflict of Interest” rule. The primary concern of the DOL’s proposal is to expand the definition of fiduciary to cover more instances of providing advice. This expansion, in turn, is designed to protect consumers from sales practices that may be tainted by a conflict of interest. The DOL’s April 2016 proposal...

In January, the Department of Labor (DOL) delivered its final fiduciary rule to the Office of Management and Budget for review. Also known as the Conflict of Interest rule, it updates the standards by which advisors to retirement plans operate and requires them to put their clients’ best interests before their own profits. The DOL rule is expected to be released publicly as early as March. If it moves forward, it will likely be effective before the end of the year.

If implemented, the...

The TED Radio Hour’s broadcast “The Money Paradox,” covers some great material on the impact of language and culture on behavioral finance. This topic fascinates me thanks in part to my day job: As IMCA’s education and product development manager, I was closely involved with defining the content in our new Applied Behavioral Finance certificate program. Here are a few of my takeaways from the broadcast and some interesting examples of just how closely culture and behavioral finance are...