Hi Allen, Re: samples to test/educate in AIM based trading.........
There are a lot of reasons that I would recommend against leveraged funds or ETFs, but that discussion can wait until another time. That said, this class of investments does offer larger amplitude of price change that would help to demonstrate AIM's trading abilities.
Here's two that should provide enough volatility in the shorter term to give you and AIM some practice. ENPSX (Energy Sector) and TEPSX (Info Tech Sector) are both 1.5X leveraged funds (meaning they move on a daily basis about 1.5 times whatever the underlying investments move) and should give you enough to work with.
Go to Finance.Yahoo.com and enter the ticker symbol in the "Enter Symbol" window in the upper left hand side of the page. Then click on "Historical Prices" in the menu on the left side of the screen. There you can choose Daily, Weekly or Monthly for history.
So you don't wear out too many pencils, I'd suggest you take the Monthly price history from January, 2007 through December of 2010. That will give you 60 AIM entries that should vary tremendously over time. During good times it will wad up cash by the 55 gallon drum full. During bad times it will most likely exhaust the cash reserves completely.
Start with 50% Cash Reserve (one half of the total value for the holding) and with 10% Buy and Sell SAFE. Put in a column which shows the %age of total value that the Cash represents, so that it's always handy to see. Then watch as AIM manages that cash through thick and thin.
Things to note are peak cash percent level, cash low point, months with NO cash available, speed at which cash is replenished, and what total value is when the cash is back to the starting value, what the cash reserve percentage is at that point. Those things will be instructive. It will teach you how AIM builds cash, how it burns through cash and how quickly it recovers. It will also show you what the value is in buying discounted shares for when they recover. (it will also demonstrate the "two edged sword" aspect of leveraged funds!)
Let me know how this works for you. If you want me to check your figures when you're done, I can model the same period and funds with the same settings and see what I get. They should be close except for rounding errors.
Best regards,
