About me:
I am more of a long term investor. Don't care, nor have the time for tracking day to day changes, nor do I care about getting crazy returns.  I currently have around 50% of my portfolio in cash (whew!) and want to gradually put that into the market. What I have in non cash is  in Gold, clean energy and international markets (emerging and germany), as well a large chuck in US equities.
One concern is long term inflation. Hence I want to invest a small hedge in TIPS. What are your thoughts?
Thanks.

Thanks for your response hybrid. I am thinking the same too. Given that the TIPS based ETFs are going up, would it make sense to buy TIPS directly instead?

I'm looking for advice on the following: Actix, TIP and IPE. The latter two have a premium/discount associated with them. Does anyone know what they mean?

I would think that under normal circumstances TIPS should be one of the safest possible investments out there, but it does seem to me that these may no longer be "normal circumstances". A couple of possible downsides to TIPS and I-Bonds: 1. The U.S. Government, ie. the people paying the interest on those bonds, are the ones who determine what the inflation rate is, and hence how much interest they will be paying the holders. Some people contend that the government underestimates the inflation rate. The official formula *has* been modified in the Clinton area, I believe. One site you might want to check out is: http://www.shadowstats.com/ which shows a chart of the old Consumer Price Index vs the current one. Even that might not make TIPS a bad investment, even if one were to lose a little ground on inflation, especially in certain economic environments. A bigger, though less probably, concern by some pretty well educated economists is that the U.S. government might be getting so far into debt that they might be driven to rather drastic measures if things begin to get out of hand. Some postulate that they might not allow people to cash out of their Treasuries if inflation begins to go wild and they can't sell enough on the open market. Theoretically they could institute "temporary" requirements that Treasuries be rolled over at expiration. Even worse would be outright default as has happened in other countries who have gotten too far into debt. I know that sounds rather outlandish to many, but here are a couple of pages that might indicate that such "outlandish" scenarios are not quite as outlandish as some may think. The first is by Chris Martenson who has a PhD, though not in economics. His facts and logic hold up, however, as far as I can tell and I've seen economists with PhDs making similar arguments. http://www.chrismartenson.com/crashcourse You can scroll down through the various topics. They are short videos which I think are very good, or you can scroll a little below the videos to see transcripts of what is said. Another is by a professor at MIT who was a former chief economist for the International Monetary Fund, the infamous IMF. He postulates that the U.S. government appears to be unduly influenced by some mega financiers, not onlike the situations in developing countries who are bankrupted by similar corruption in government. http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200905/imf-advice He was apparently one of the sources Matt Taibbi used in his article in Rolling Stone excoriating Goldman Sachs' influence in the Treasury and at the Federal Reserve: http://www.box.net/shared/llslr792r8 --- In summary, TIPS probably are one of the safest investments around, but I don't think they're quite as risk free as I would have several years ago. 2.