. IVOL is a chimera, a lion with a goat’s head sticking out of its back. Most of its assets are held in a bond ETF that any mom or pop can buy. The rest of the money goes to options bets that are off limits to even many professional asset managers because of the sophisticated ways they offer investors of losing their shirts. It’s the options, however, that make IVOL unique and what could, if inflation expectations rise sharply and quickly enough, provide a windfall.
– are the same assets held in a Charles Schwab TIPS ETF. Schwab’s fee: 0.04% per year, or 25 times less than IVOL.that IVOL was “crazy cheap for what we do” and that one of her clients called it “the Vanguard of convexity.” She also suggested a more apt comparison would be to actively managed mutual funds with similar objectives.
IVOL’s options make money as the yield on the 10-year outpaces that of the 2. History suggests the gap should be wider than it is today. Instead, the spread has narrowed.