An IPS is the document that survives the moment of fear. It states your time horizon, your target allocation, your concentration limits, your rebalancing rule, and what you will do in a crash. It fits on one page on purpose: long policies do not get followed. The point is not that your IPS is mathematically optimal — it is that it is yours, you wrote it on a calm day, and you signed it. When the market is in free-fall and the news is screaming and you are tempted to sell everything, you do not have to argue with yourself. You read what you signed and you follow it. Six chip-picks below. Pick what matches what you would actually do.

“Investors with a written IPS outperform investors with a mental IPS. The gap shows up in the loud weeks.”