Talk:Investment policy statement

Should an IPS contain guidelines on the limits on individual holdings (i.e. no holding more than 5% of total portfolio value) and number of holdings required for diversification? --Peculiar Investor 12:13, 15 June 2012 (MDT)

Do you mean individual securities (vs. a mutual fund)? In any case, I don't think you should put implementation details in a policy statement (what to do), portfolio percentages are part of asset allocation (how to do it).

Consider incorporating the [[Investment Plan]] as part of the Investment Policy Statement. It's a simplified version of the Investment Policy Statement, so why not put it here as a first step? Then, lead into the investment policy statement for those who need to do more. --LadyGeek 19:30, 15 June 2012 (MDT)

Incorporated the [[Investment Plan]] into the Investment Policy Statement. --LadyGeek 19:05, 30 June 2012 (MDT)

Reader feedback: Should this page be moved to...

Blbarnitz posted this comment on 22 November 2013 (view all feedback).

Should this page be moved to lower case? Investment policy statement

Any thoughts?

LadyGeek 19:38, 12 December 2013 (MST)

An investment policy statement does not appear to be a proper term for capitalization. It's turned into an acronym because of frequent use - which is capitalized. The Bogleheads wiki also does not capitalize the page title. Investment policy statement --LadyGeek 19:47, 12 December 2013 (MST)

Major expansion based on Bogleheads wiki?

The Bogleheads wiki has a much better page on this topic, including "Benefits of using an IPS" and "Drawbacks of not using an IPS". It also says what an "Investing plan", as opposed to a full IPS, actually means (we say "a relatively simple Investment Plan may suffice" and then nothing! What's an investing plan?). So can I copy some text from the Bogleheads wiki, and I mean whole paragraphs? --Quebec 13:55, 4 February 2015 (MST)

It would appear that copying from Bogleheads wiki is allowed by their licence: GNU Free Documentation License. Similarly they can copy from finiki based on our licence Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International. So here I go... --Quebec 16:49, 5 February 2015 (MST)

Copying is certainly allowed (and encouraged). I added the Notice template at the top, as new investors may find a formal policy challenging. If so, a simple plan is fine. I also changed the phrase from "investment plan" to "investing plan" as the plan is in constant motion, i.e. you are continually investing. Do you have any questions about the Bogleheads Investing plan? --LadyGeek 18:12, 5 February 2015 (MST)

I reordered the introduction. Having the Yogi Berra quote should come first. Otherwise, the introductory sentence won't make sense. I also moved the Notice template to where it makes sense - after the IPS is explained. --LadyGeek 18:20, 5 February 2015 (MST)

The appearance looked awkward to me and really doesn't match the Manual of Style/Lead section guidelines, specifically that if possible, the page title should be the subject of the first sentence. The quotation seems to fit better with the first section and I collapsed the Notice down into a standalone paragraph for better flow within the article. --Peculiar Investor 22:22, 5 February 2015 (MST)

Too complex and therefore not completed?

In Financial Wisdom Forum post: "Time to sell US equities? by longinvest" it is stated "As I said, if AA+RebalancingPolicy = IPS, I already have one which I could spell out in very few words. The Finiki IPS goes into things like "expected annualized return", "selection criteria", etc." This is good feedback that perhaps there is work to be done to improve the article. By including the exhaustive list, it seems we are putting too many roadblocks or hurdles in the way of a reader completing the task. At the end of the day a simple IPS is better than no IPS and it can always be improved, extended later. This Financial Wisdom Forum post: "Clippings 2015" provides a link to Bah humbug to ridiculous year-end financial advice - The Washington Post that might be worthwhile as an simple example. --Peculiar Investor 16:49, 29 December 2015 (MST)

What longinvest wants is a simple Investing plan. So I've added a fourth step to the Investing plan section of the IPS page: rebalance. Then I moved the section on Investing plan at the top of the page for better visibility. --Quebec 08:59, 30 December 2015 (MST)

Major review of IPS definition?

The current definition of an IPS says: "It spells out how you will measure how you are doing and how often you will review how you are doing."

Why should an index investor do such a thing? Just to set himself up for behavioral mistakes? Really! Imagine a 100% stocks investor measuring how he is doing in February 2009. He is doing badly! Should he change his asset allocation to include mostly bonds at that point?

I think that the entire definition of what an Investment Policy Statement is should be put under review. Such a document shouldn't be a tool to exacerbate behavioral mistakes, by setting expectations about things the investor doesn't control. It should, instead, put the focus on things he controls. --Longinvest

There is an on-going discussion in this Financial Wisdom Forum topic: "The One-Line Investment Policy Statement (IPS)" --LadyGeek 18:12, 4 March 2018 (CST)

See: User:LadyGeek/Investment policy statement --LadyGeek 19:03, 4 March 2018 (CST)