The SEC’s Office of Investor Education and Assistance (OIEA), the Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s (CFTC) Office of Customer Education and Outreach, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA), the North American Securities Administrators Association (NASAA), National Futures Association (NFA), and the Securities Investor Protection Corporation (SIPC) are issuing this Investor Bulletin to provide investors with information for World Investor Week 2026, a global campaign promoted by the International Organization of Securities Commissions (IOSCO) to raise awareness about the importance of investor education and protection.

Knowing how to be a resilient investor can help you weather uncertainty, especially in times of market volatility and economic headwinds. Preparing in advance for potential change can help you stay the course. Being resilient also means staying alert to fraud. Fraudulent investment schemes—including relationship investment scams—have resulted in investors worldwide losing billions of dollars each year. In addition, advanced technology tools, such as artificial intelligence (AI), have made impersonation of individuals and organizations by fraudsters more convincing and harder to discern from what is real. Planning ahead and staying vigilant can help protect you from unpredictable markets and against fraud and scams.

Economic conditions and other factors can lead to market fluctuations that impact your investments. Being resilient means having a plan in place that will help you achieve your financial goals despite market changes that might occur along the way.

• A resilient investor plans for life’s unexpected challenges with budgeting and investment strategies that manage risk, reduce the impact of inflation, and limit the use of high-interest debt. Maintaining adequate savings and following a diversified investment strategy can help you limit the effects of market changes and ensure that you’re prepared to face unplanned life events without having to liquidate investments prematurely.
   
• Diversification and asset allocation are important pillars of smart, resilient investing. Spreading out your investments across and within asset classes can help reduce the risks of investing. In a well-diversified investment portfolio, if one particular investment suffers a loss, other investments might help balance out the loss. Investing across and within different asset classes—like individual stocks and bonds, for example, and through pooled funds, such as mutual funds, index funds, and exchange-traded funds (ETFs)—can support diversification and asset allocation.  
   
• Patient, periodic investing—and employing strategies such as dollar-cost averaging—can help mitigate volatility and short-term swings in portfolio performance. Chasing returns through short-term trading or trying to “time the market” might lead to buying when an investment has reached all-time highs and selling when the market is falling, which can result in reduced investment returns. In contrast, periodic investing helps to capture short-term swings in trading prices without the potential negative effects of “buying high” or “selling low.”    
   
• Consider making a plan that helps you pay off high-interest debt. No investment strategy consistently pays off as well as, or with less risk than, minimizing high interest debt. Many credit cards charge high interest rates—as much as 18 percent or more—if you don’t pay off your balance in full each month.
   
• Having adequate emergency savings will help you respond to financial shocks without turning to credit or selling investments when you don’t want to. An emergency fund is rainy-day money you keep in a bank or credit union to use if you have an unexpected expense, like a cracked phone screen, car or house repair, or family emergency. If you don’t have an emergency fund, even a small financial upset can result in a long-term debt. Save enough money to have a buffer for life’s unexpected expenses:
   
  • Set a savings goal, such as three to six months of living expenses.
     
  • Save automatically, for example by setting up a direct deposit to a savings account with each paycheck.
     
  • Take advantage of one-time windfalls, such as tax refunds and gift money, to boost savings more quickly.

In addition to setting and following an investment plan, resilient investors actively take steps to protect their assets from scams. Fraud involving relationship investment scams continues to rise, with investors losing billions of dollars to this type of scam every year.

• A relationship investment scam typically involves a “long con” in which a stranger makes contact initially via text, social media, or a messaging app and works to develop a friendship or romantic connection over time before introducing a (fraudulent) investment scheme. After building rapport and working to build a sense of trust, the scammers might offer to help you achieve your financial goals with investment “opportunities.”  They might direct you to a legitimate-looking (but ultimately fake) website or app where you “invest” your funds. The site might provide fake trading information and show your investment “gains.”
   
• The scammers often ask you to invest increasingly larger sums of money. They might encourage you to take out a small initial withdrawal to gain trust. However, if you try to withdraw large amounts or close the account, they might come up with an excuse why it isn’t possible, say more money is required, or tell you for the first time that you must pay more to cover fees or taxes. If you raise questions, they might become angry, stop responding, or block you from contacting them, and might remove access to the website or app.
   
• Ignore messages from anyone you don’t know, even if they seem harmless, and consider deleting or blocking them.
   
• Watch this video to learn how these scams work, what to look out for, and more ways to protect yourself.

Impersonation, or imposter, scams have become more sophisticated with fraudsters using technology, such as AI, to carry on the impersonation. In addition, scams might involve impersonations of legitimate individuals or companies—including regulators. Fraudsters might also misuse or create fake versions of documents and filings that investors rely upon to inform their investment decisions.  

• Fraudsters might impersonate organizations or individuals to lure investors into scams. They might impersonate government agencies or employees, or legitimate investment professionals like brokers and investment advisers. Impersonators might be part of an advance fee scam, or might use personal information they obtain to steal an individual’s identity or misappropriate their financial assets.
   
• Communications—including phone calls, voicemails, text messages, messages sent via social media or apps, emails, letters, and certificates—might falsely appear to be from the SEC, FINRA, the CFTC, NFA, or other organizations. Be very skeptical if you’re contacted by someone claiming to be from the SEC, FINRA, the CFTC, NFA, or other organizations asking about your shareholdings, account numbers, trading activity, PINs, passwords, digital addresses, digital wallet private keys or seed phrases, or other information that might be used to access your financial accounts. This might be part of a scam to compromise your investment, financial, or other personal accounts. Fraudsters might also claim to be from an investor protection organization such as SIPC and falsely require payment from investors to obtain protection or the return of assets. SIPC will never require payment to obtain protection or assist in recovery. Call the organization using a phone number on their public website—not a number that’s provided by the contacting party—to verify the legitimacy of the ask before providing any personal information or sending any money.
   
• In some cases, fraudsters have made SEC filings and mischaracterized these filings in order to appear legitimate. Fraudsters have used SEC exempt reporting adviser (ERA) and Form D filings to falsely tell investors that they’re registered with the SEC or have shown investors a fake certificate from the SEC. They’ve also used Form 4 filings to claim that the fake filings confirm the investor’s purchase of shares, even though the trades were never made and the fraudsters might have simply stolen the money. Do not invest with anyone who misrepresents that they’re registered with the SEC or mischaracterizes SEC filings.

Check out your investment professional. Brokerage firms and individuals involved in buying and selling securities, and commodity futures or other derivatives, must meet specific registration requirements. When seeking investment advice, make sure you are working with a registered investment professional or entity. Use the SEC’s Check Out Your Investment Professional search tool on Investor.gov, FINRA’s BrokerCheck, and NFA’s BASIC system, to: (1) confirm registration status of investment professionals or market intermediaries; and (2) check for any disciplinary history. When purchasing securities through a U.S. brokerage firm, confirm it is a member of SIPC at www.sipc.org. In Canada, you can use the Canadian Securities Administrators’ National Registration Search. To help research the validity of exchanges and other investment platforms, start by checking to see if they are on the SEC’s list of national securities exchanges or regulated alternative trading systems. You can also contact your state or provincial securities regulator. If you are unsure who that is, please see NASAA’s “Contact Your Regulator” web page.

If you have questions about your investments or your investment professional, are suspicious about an investment opportunity, or have information about potentially fraudulent, illegal, or unethical activity, reach out for help. 

You can call the SEC’s investor assistance line at (800) 732-0330 or the FINRA Securities Helpline for Seniors at 844-57-HELPS (844-574-3577) for support. You can contact your state securities regulator or file a complaint or a regulatory tip with FINRA. You can also report a problem concerning your investments or report possible securities fraud to the SEC, or by emailing Help@SEC.gov. 

Report commodity or derivative-related complaints to the CFTC. For a derivatives-related complaint (involving futures, options on futures, forex, or swaps) involving a pending, current, or former NFA member (as displayed in BASIC), file with NFA and call (312) 781-1410 or (800) 621-3570 (Monday – Friday, 8:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m. Central Time) to reach NFA’s Information Center representatives who are available to help answer investor questions.

Follow the SEC and sign up for email updates on investing-related topics and news.

Visit Investor.gov, the SEC’s website for individual investors. Receive Investor Alerts and Bulletins from OIEA by email or RSS feed. You can also find information and resources from FINRA at finra.org/investors.

Visit the Learn & Protect section of CFTC.gov for information about fraud that involves commodities or derivatives trading, to check the credentials and disciplinary histories of individuals or companies, to submit a fraud complaint, or to sign up to receive customer education emails.

This Investor Bulletin represents the views of the staff of the Office of Investor Education and Assistance. It is not a rule, regulation, or statement of the Securities and Exchange Commission (“Commission”). The Commission has neither approved nor disapproved its content. This Bulletin, like all staff guidance, has no legal force or effect: it does not alter or amend applicable law, and it creates no new or additional obligations for any person.