Hi Tom,
I hadn't actually thought of that.
Off the top of my head, I think if you held one stock (or a group of highly correlated stocks that you think of as one) and cash, then AIM and Opportunistic Rebalancing (OR) are somewhat related.
However AIM doesn't have a neat way to rebalance between multiple stocks (just between equity and cash).
On the flip side, the OR threshold and tolerance bands are static whereas AIM has a dynamic Portfolio Control. So AIM "rebalances" back to a moving policy benchmark while OR rebalances to a static policy benchmark (with some wiggle room).
I actually think they can complement each other nicely. AIM rebalances individual cash/stock portfolios (the micro level) and OR rebalances multiple AIM-managed portfolios (the macro level).
So AIM takes advantage of an individual stock's volatility and reduces risk at that level while OR takes advantage of uncorrelated AIM-managed portfolios (the holistic view).
And since individual AIM portfolios will usually hold cash, it can make rebalancing easier since it may not be necessary to actually sell individual stocks to rebalance at the Macro level.
On the other hand, Macro rebalancing will require us to interfere with AIM when OR tells us we should rebalance. I don't view this with too much concern because I personally don't have an issue with making non-AIM-directed sales/purchases and manually adjusting the Portfolio Control appropriately if there's a good reason to do so, however I'm sure some AIM purists would not like the idea.
Thanks for bringing this up. I think there could be a few different ways in which AIM and OR could interact. At the end of the day they both seek to control risk and buy low and sell high -- just at different levels.
Mark.
