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Hi, Toofuzzy,
So the Contrarian Idea is to buy a fund with a low Relative Strength? Or do you want to buy the worst performing for some time period like one year?
In general, yes. Mr. Vomund found that the 1 year performance metric seemed to work best. I'll have to do some testing to see which is most effective - low RS or low performance. Not sure if one or the other would behave that way consistently where one could always go with one all the time.
Relative Strength may well be a measure of what the investing public thinks of the given ETF. Performance may be more an effective measure of what the ETF's done relative to its benchmark. Certainly starting from the low end by either metric will be buying what is out of favor in one way or another. When you've gone so far down, perhaps the only way back is up as opposed to investing in something with the idea that it's going to keep going up.
Stay tuned.
AIMster
Buy from the Scared, Sell to the Greedy???
Apparently Mr. Vomund does it the other way around!!!
I think he's onto the line of "buy from the greedy, sell to the greedy-er!" Works most of the time, until someone pulls the rug out from underneath!
Best,
AIMster
From the case-in-point department:
I sorted the table of sector funds by relative strength, picked out the worst of the lot, current;y IHF, iShares Healthcare Providers. Could have some possibilities, though looks like mid March would have been the best time to jump in..
For comparative purposes, the strongest at relative strength,
IEZ, iShares Oil Equipment & Services
Interesting, interesting...
Worst 1-year performance ranking
Best 1 year performance:
Free data!
Sometime back I mentioned David Vomund, author of ETF trading strategies. His book basically advocates a momentum strategy, always rotating into the highest relative strength funds, selling off as they fall in the rankings, than moving into whatever's moved up. Don Carlson did some testing and found that whilst his returns were okay, better results could be obtained by doing the opposite, i.e., invest in the worst performing and waiting for them to start to return to favor. I suggested this strategy to Mr. Vomund who didn't test it. That the antithesis of the theory of his book, cough cough, may actually outperform what he convinced a publisher to publish, could, I suppose give some reservation to testing.
All that being said, I recently found my way back to his site and notices that he supplies data each week, but in a .PDF format. No matter how I tried to get from the PDF to ASCII, it wouldn't quite go. I therefore emailed him and asked if he could supply the data in a .CSV, comma separated ASCII file which could be imported into almost anything.
Well, I got a bit of a nice surprise when I got an email today from him telling me that he's now going to offer the data in an Excel file each weekend in addition to the .PDF. It's in one chart of iShares Style Index Funds Based on S&P Indexes (YTD % Return), followed by 3 tables:
First is S&P 500 style rankings (value, growth, blend, largecap, midcap, smaalcap)
Second is the foreign MSCI ETFs
Finally the iShares sector funds.
Oh, yes, the important link to the file itself!!
http://www.etftradingstrategies.com/analysis-docs/webspreadsheet.xls
One more tool, and you can't argue the price!!
AIM on!
AIMster
re: LD-AIM
See:
http://www.aim-users.com/aimware.htm
LD-AIM Information
Several AIM users contributed to an idea of using "virtual" shares in an AIM account. Steve Grabczyk formalized it while the name "Low Down AIM" materialized. It's now referred to as LD-AIM. You can read more about this concept and use Steve's handy spreadsheet to get a feel for how this works. The idea works well for people with limited assets available to deploy into an individual AIM account or for those interested in an AIM method which can go 100% liquid cash once in a while.
I've fiddled with different feedback rates to Portf. Control, but I've had trouble coming up with a consistent pattern of improvement. If we knew in advance we were in a long term bullish period, then it would make sense to have the feedback as high as possible. That would inhibit selling and therefore maximized paper profits.
It's the 'knowing in advance' part that is difficult to master!!!
Give you the gold-star cluster understatement award. I ran a backtest on Netflix recently. Found that 75% PC incrementation shot the return up from some 310% to 520%!!! Sigh...
Best,
AIMster
Thoughts? Does it matter so much in the long run?
In the long run, every holding will have its "orbit" of in-favor with the market or out. Funds tend not to "orbit" with as wide a swing as stocks can. Think planetary rotation around the sun instead of a comet.
Now what some find useful is, in the case of having two holdings, find those that aren't correlated. The recent comparison Perf chart I did for Tom comparing CGNX against CEF is a decent example. Where you don't want to be is having everything moving in near lockstep - the warning there being for just entering retirement and at that very moment we have a deja vu of 2000-2003, or worse.
Granted the continued trend toward globalization makes stocks worldwide more correlated perhaps than they used to be, but in general a balance between geography as well as market cap, industry and so on will help some to zig, whilst the others zag, as it were. Not all eggs in one basket, to use the maxim. William Bernstein's done a couple of good books on asset allocation - worth reading!
Best,
AIMster
'll be interested too. I get my old brownco price at etrade still today, $5 market/ $10 limit,,, but most of all i get to use a great phone system all day for the same price at etrade. Looks like Zecco is free for internet first 10 trades per month, $4.50 after that,,,, phone broker assisted is $19.99 (ouch),, so without access to a computer I don't know? I am going to call them and ask to get a phone system like the old brownco,, several brownco people at Zecco,, it could keep me from switching,,,etrade bought out brownco and its phone system,, so we'll see,,,,He's happy about $0 trades though,,, he's getting close to trading
You may also want to look at foliofn http://www.foliofn.com
Jersey Al and I (Ray too, I think) all use it with good result. For $290 a year give or take, unlimited folios, unlimited trades (through their window time system) and so on. I remember brownco - started with them in the ancient days when they were Pacific Brokerage, before they became Dreyfus, became Brownco, etc.
Best,
AIMster
Well, apparently Heaven had a run on miracles that spring were in short supply by the time He gets to them. The Couple (Him, mostly) ends up dumping almost 80% of their investment portfolio into stocks which to this day are struggling to break even for Them.
Hi, WB,
It happens. I got burned on a couple of the oh-so-lofty dividends being returned on real estate trusts/players in the beginning of 2007. Then, as you know, the market hit the land mine under that one and "Ka-BOOM!" So, I ended up taking some losses before the companies vanished altogether, yep, pennies on the dollar. The silver lining on that cloud came this year when I did the taxes - we're getting a much larger refund than I'd have expected since the capital gains netted out to a whopping, are you ready, $153!!! Since I withold more in anticipation of larger numbers than that (ahem), the extra bucks will come in handy for porch repair work and the like. (Yes, there's an IRA on the side, independent of all this).
Best recommendation I can make is to keep applying AIM to those puppies and keep lowering the average cost. With Microsoft and others looking to buy Yahoo, you MAY get to say Yaaaa-hoooo! at some point down the road.
Good luck!!
Best,
AIMster
This is the ETF I am considering AIMing.
Hi, Conky,
Welcome. I see TooFuzzy's given a lot of good advice as a first reply. I'll second the idea that it's a good thing to be starting off with an ETF, these seldom go to $0.00, always a possibility with a stock.
You're on the right track with the stockcharts that you linked to. What it shows is that there's good volatility to the fund, which is what drives the AIM engine. That being said, we usually look at a chart more like this:
You'll note the main differences are that it's on a weekly, rather than daily scale. Also the zig-zag's been upped to 30 from your original 20. Why? Well, 30 is the sum of the by-the-book AIM parameters 10% buy SAFE + 10% sell SAFE + 5% min buy and 5% min sell. This means a 30% gain round trip from the buy back up to the sell. Not bad at all!
Most of us use stockcharts in this fashion, to look for the up-and-down movements, rather than to see one in a narrow trading range for a long period of time.
So, between Toofuzzy's advice and this supplement, if you've any more questions, you've come to the right place! So feel free to ask away.
Best,
AIMster
Now, to find the perfect inversely correlated company to own with it..............
Hi, Tom,
Maybe not "perfect" but looks like a "contenda," CEF, the Canadian Silver fund, eh? Stretch this perf chart out...
http://stockcharts.com/charts/performance/perf.html?CGNX,cef
Best,
AIMster
Thanks, AIMster.
I hope I 'm not coming across a rough or harsh or anything like such. (One can never really tell with plain text communication. Even emoticons leave a lot to be desired.)
Hi, Winkerbean,
Funny you should write this as I thought it was ME coming across as somewhat difficult so there you are then. <grin>. It's those ah-ha moments when we finally get what the person is really saying, sometimes takes an extra go now and then to sort it all out. But I think this board, more than many, is made up of a patient bunch who I think all try and be mutually respectful of each other and I've found that we'll just keep at it until we've all got mutually connected synapses!
It gets challenging I'm sure for people on various sides of the ponds that separate us when there are differences in numerical notation and things like that to factor in to understanding ideas. Been like an algebra class on here lately with all the formulaic notation messages going back and forth!
We'll all keep at it so we can all share the best ways to AIM for our growing piles of dollars, euros, pounds or whatever be our currency of choice!
Best,
AIMster
Well, according to the DMI technique, the awarding of points is a preliminary step in preparation for calculating a moving average of both bull points and bear points. As such, the sample is a 'daily snapshot'. I'm sure I'm just being a stickler about such things, but I would think taking multiple samples for the one day violates the underlying principle of the technique.
Hi, WB,
I'm just saying if a given daily value nets to zero, then just discount the day as a wash and then start again with the next day's values. I suppose one would just need to monitor a few days' worth to see how often you'd get a netting out to zero value. It might happen less often than you'd think, making it less of an issue overall. Or so one may hope!
Best,
AIMster
However, I had a question about the DMI technique. According to the page at gummy-stuff.org (and other pages), One should award 'points' to the Bulls, if the 'potential' (my term) Bull points are larger than the 'potential' Bear points and to the Bears if vice versa. What if the potential points for both Bulls and Bears are the same?
I'd think in that case you'd keep taking samples until the further direction of the market will tip it again toward the bulls or the bears. In other words, if the market itself is indicating that it's running in neutral, then that's where you need to be until a direction asserts or re-asserts itself.
Best,
AIMster
I have never heard of D'Alemberts but I thought what you sort of described is a way to never lose at some casino game which they will not let you use (even if you could afford to)
If you lose you bet twice as much and keep doubling your bet every time you lose. (this can get expensive very quickly) If you win you start with one unit ($1.00 . $10,00, or whatever) all over again. I think you do this with 21 but not sure. Maybe Roulette where you bet on either red or black.
I think this principle was the one Mr. Lichello was referring to when he talks about the Middle Eastern gamblers going to play the casinos on the French Riviera and doubling on each losing spin of the wheel. By the time their number came up, as it were, they had so much on the table that the casinos were only glad to be rid of them before they wiped them out completely. The same sort of idea as the kid who wants to be paid $0.01 cents the first day, $0.02 cents the second and so on. At the end of the month he's loaded and the IRS will welcome a visit!
AIMster
So how are you folks feeling about the economy over there?
From what I read in the financial papers they seem to feel that a real recovery is a long way off.
Well, the recession at this point still seems more something people are talking about than something quite tangible just yet. The rollout of the "stimulus" package is supposed to start sooner than expected. This will toss about $300-600 or so per tax filer out to people with the idea that they will then toss it back into the economy and keep the wheel turning, as it were. Of course we're going to have to pay for this somehow or other later on. I visualize President Bush as "The Joker" from the Batman movie scene where The Joker's tossing money to the crowds going wild, only to release the poison gas in the balloons to spite them for their greed. But I think Bush will become more and more rash as the days of his term in office dwindle down, barring a "national emergency" to derail the election - a thought from the province of the conspiracy-paranoid front, but it's out there, nonetheless. Stranger things have been known to happen. Living near New York City on Long Island I saw the World Trade Center go up - I never thought I'd see it come down in my lifetime, especially in so horrorific way as it did. So what may seem as impossible these days I think is more correctly relegated to improbable instead.
I fear a gradual slide into more of a police state. Bit on the NYC news the other night about a program funded for two years, that they're trying to make permanent of supercops armed with automatics in Kevlar suits down in the Subways. Full acquittal of NYC cops in the Sean Bell case - a bachelor and his buddies were out celebrating the last night of his "freedom" at a club, somehow or other cops got involved and 50 shots later he's dead and his buddies injured. Even closer to home in the town up the lake last week some bomb threat notes, then an M80 firecracker set off in the boys' room of the middle school, not an unusual prank in and of itself, though this one had been packed with shrapnel.. major closing and shutdown there. Cops screening everyone from elementary school through high school - one of the daughters of a co-worker felt the school was more like a prison than a school. Some kid in South Carolina busted, now facing Federal charges for wanting to build a homemade bomb. Fortunately they got to him before he could put it together. Nice peaceful society we've got here, eh?
The biggest clouds on the immediate horizon are a spike in food prices, particularly grains, and of course gasoline, with oil reaching new highs last week. The high fuel cost is the most insidious drag on the economy as so much of the economy depends on moving goods and people around. The cost ultimately gets passed up to the end consumer - so the challenge is to keep all the balls in the air, mortgage, food, etc. So we'll see how it all plays out.
They have also pointed out that the Fed has destroyed the 'Moral hazard' theory by rescuing the very people who caused the problems thus giving them more incentive to create more financial problems in the future at a much grander scale as they know the government will not let them fail.
I think the bigger issue that is part of the whole subprime mess is how these things got bundled up in issues that became more and more removed from the actual original mortgages. Much like the kids' game of "musical chairs" as long as the music lasted all was well. Once it stopped, though, Bear Stearns found themselves without a seat. The problem was that the chairs are connected, much as a row at a train station. So if Bear Stearns landed on their backsides, they were so connected to others still on the chairs I think the thought was that they'd pull down the whole lot after them. Given that your banks on the other side of the planet are feeling some of the downdraft, just shows how connected all these players are. Which is very scary when one thinks about it. 1930's deja vu we can do without. The sound of falling dominoes is not pretty.
No doubt more will reveal itself as we go on - and the change of Administration here next year will have it's own unique stamp on the shape of things to come.
Best,
AIMster
May be you would like to run a few AIM experiments, with say a standard Test Data Set? If you do then I will ask Clive to make the Response Charts as he did for AIM.
Hi, Conrad,
I have Automatic Investor which allows backtesting. Give me a starting date, security symbol, cash/equity ratio, SAFE, Min trans parameters and I can run it through either daily, weekly or monthly, posting the results here.
Best,
AIMster
I'm not versed in either TA or W%.
Hi, Alton,
Not versed in TA? Me, not so much either.
On the other hand, T & A, oh yeah, now THAT's what I'm talkin' about. Shake that booty to make me sound like Cramer! BooooYAH!!!! <GRIN>
Thanks for providing the good material!
Best,
AIMster
Hi, Adam,
What is ROTAI?
From Conrad's board header info:
Excel basic-versions of VORTEX are available. They show the principal features without all the portfolio features the the Windows version has. The cost of these Excel sheets are €10 or € 15 and can be used for testing strategies so that the Agression Factors, Trade Dead Band, and the Cash Equity Ratio (CER) can be optimised on the basis of anticipated share price swings. Also the actual Return On Time Averaged Investment (ROTAI)is calculated on these Vortex Excel sheets:
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/board.asp?board_id=1341
Best,
AIMster
Hi, Conrad,
I see your point - if starting from an exact same starting place - same fund, same investment amount, same cash/equity ratio, etcetra, where, after so many iterations would AIM and Vortex end up, following their normal rules and same data set?
It's easy to tune any system to cherry-pick optimize the end result, but does that actually mean anything? Likely not so much.
Keeping it as simple as possible should make for a more direct apples-to-apples comparison of both algorithms, results of each can then be plotted, as Clive has done with AIM.
Best,
AIMster
Hi, Conrad,
Your remark
If the fund lacks volatility one can artificially increase the volatility or use one of the Ultra 2x funds.
requires some explanation: "What is an Ultra 2x fund?
One of these seeks to have 2x the volatility of the regular market. If a 'regular' general market fund goes up 5%, theoretically one of these funds should go up 10%. Of course that can work against you as well!
Best,
AIMster
<OT> and I know I slipped on this one, it has such appeal!
Had a sale yesterday of some CQB. I have one more sale to do and then I will be sold out which is what I want.
Ok - I know y'all would worry about me if I saw this one and did not respond! One more sale and Toofuzzy will echo Harry Chapin's lament:
"Yes, we have no bananas,
We have no bananas today!
Yes, we have no bananas,
bananas in Scranton, PA!"
from: 30,000 pounds of bananas
Now back to our regularly scheduled show, already in progress.
AIMster
From the for what it's worth dept. (or not, as the case may be).
I note that Mr. Lichello often discounted the interest earned on one's cash reserve as being largely immaterial. Personally, I'd rather be glad for the interest rates he mentioned in the book. Point being I got the interest credited to the account today. All $.52 cents of it. I'll try and not spend it all in one place!
The problem is that this very pithy rate of return really makes the cash reserve drag even more in terms of providing total return. When my other holdings are doing around 9% or better, this hurts.
I'll have to see if they offer a money market fund as an alternative to their pathetic sweep system.
Can you post timliness figures,specially those which are down and hence good for contrarians like AIMers.
Aa useful as that would be, doing so, especially on an ongoing basis would violate Value Line's copyright and could get MM, Tom and the people running this whole thing into big trouble.
Do you have access to it at a public or college library? I think they also offer an online-only subscription which I think is cheaper and certainly less environmentally comsumptive of the paper version.
Best,
AIMster
Results after 10 years 7%
I made a routine to change these settings, what I see is that when you channge 80% initial stock to 90%, results are 9,7.
BUT when I started from 0% on the buy and sell settings and tried all kind of variations these where the results for that particular stock:
Buy Trigger 14% Min Buy 4% Sell Trigger 5% Min Sell 40%
These settings gave me a whooping 193.5% result.
Ofcourse these are analyses on historical data. Feel my pain?
Hi, Jon,
Yes I do, feel your pain, that is. What you've done is an excellent exercise in data fitting. Unfortunately you'd need a time machine to take you back to the start of the sample period with the current result parameters in hand and invest accordingly.
Unfortunately that won't work either. By being an investor (on the return trip when you weren't at first) you're changing (ever so slightly) the conditions that existed in the actual historical time-stream that you used to base your backtest on. The further back in time of your re-entry, the greater the distortion effect. Such distortion could go either way - you might well become filthy rich, or precipitate the next great crash. Those are the two extremes, of course. The likely effect would be much smaller, on the single stock. You'd compound the distortion if you'd take large profits from the one stock that you know about from the future, and start investing in other stocks.
It's for simple reasons like this that time travel is so difficult. Unless you ask the Doctor! Who? - exactly!
Seriously, though, One can even take a very simple system, such as one that sells on a 1% gain. Once you sell, invest the whole lot in something else, hold as long as necessary and then sell again at 1% gain. Start with a mere $2000 and 626 repetitions later you'll be a millionaire. How long it would take to do such repetitions is the open-ended question, and this is obviously best done in a tax-deferred account. But the point being that even the smallest of compounding can add up over time.
I don't think it's necessary to turn the simple functionality of AIM into the quest for the Holy Grail. Many have, including most of us who feel that at one time or another that Mr. Lichello gave us a good starting point, and we've added useful augmentations through the years, but the constant, nagging question is can we do better, can we find the elusive 'magick formula' that will allow us to invoke the daemon of unlimited prosperity? I think a fellow by the name of Faust, in company of a King, Midas by name, would warn us, "been there, done that" Not to their ultimate good end, either! So I salute you for taking on the quest, but I think you'll come back, as most of us have, to the basic model that's proven itself for some time.
Best,
AIMster
I, too, like to react to the future instead of predicting it. At the same time, I want to make sure I react the best way I know. I may find the variable SAFE simply doesn't work. The technique may produce no better results (based on overall return and ROCAR) or may even produce worse results. However, I'd like to know.
Fear not, WB,
You're walking in the very footsteps of Mr. Lichello himself. He called himself a tinkerer and was always trying to find the most optimum formula. In the end he left us with AIM-HI, 10% Buy and Sell SAFE, 10% min trans size and 80/20 equity to cash ratio. This was suitable for the 1990's "boom."
To that we've added split SAFE values, volume consideration, moving average crossover, and various other 'tweaks' to the core system.
Like you, I think the vWave is a good place to start and adjusting to that as a point-of-reference benchmark is not a bad idea.
Like anything else, some results will pan out as gold, some as fool's gold and some a dead end. But we don't know unless we try. So keep at it, and keep us in the loop of your labors. I've expressed the idea myself of creating somehow or other an AI (neural net type thing) AIM that would be able to "learn" based on market information and the results of buy/sell transactions fed into it to become self-adjusting in response to what it's seen. And issue recommendations accordingly.
Best,
AIMster
"Often, that kind of product issuance marks a top."
At least one could play the short side, but the whole scenario is scary to me. I'd rather not be a lemming.
Good point. Pardon the expression, but I wouldn't bet the farm on one of these. Just might be one more thing to add as a component to a larger overall portfolio.
I buy a gallon of milk just about every week, always at Sam's Club. It is around $3.00 currently. It has been at that price since at least last July based on a receipt that was handy.
Other than being the only species (that I know of right off) that regularly consumes another species' milk, the history of milk pricing at least in NY is a sordid tale indeed. Subsidies, rules and regulations, taking NY milk back in the day over to New Jersey to promote competition and offer cheaper milk - soap operas are written of these things!
What's been most affected (so far) have been grain prices, used naturally in a bakery, and pizza shops too. A 'perfect storm' as the checkout clerk put it, more shift to corn, per ethanol, rising transportation costs due to the high price of diesel, economic and climate changes. The Bill Gates foundation just recently awarded Cornell University some $27 million to study wheat rust which is reducing the supply as a disease. Nevermind the rapid decline in bees which will further impact food production.
So, today's "top" in these sorts of issues may well be tomorrow's "floor." Stick to the basics: food, water, clothing, shelter and healthcare. Long term those should do well, imho.
Best,
AIMster
Food, food everywhere and nothing to eat!
Got a bit of a reality check last night at the local bakery which features genuine bagels. Last week we got 1/2 dozen, the usual $4.80. Last night, another 1/2 dozen, $5.34! A good 10% increase! Muffins have gone up a dime, and so on and so on...
Not that this doesn't bring opportunity for those who might want to put up some dough in agricultural ETF's to make a little bread later on! Some of these even add leverage so you can really go out on a loaf!
The whole of this food for thought:
Investor's Business Daily
Commodity ETFs, ETNs Sprout From Ag Boom
Wednesday April 16, 6:25 pm ET
Trang Ho
Buying bread requires a lot more dough these days -- a staggering 15% more in March than the same month last year. Food prices overall rose 5% in the first quarter from the year-ago period, the Labor Department reported on Wednesday.
ADVERTISEMENT
Yet the pain for Americans is mild compared with the protests in Bangladesh, South Africa and elsewhere over escalating food prices. In Haiti, deadly riots led to the prime minister's ouster over the weekend.
It may be a crisis in developing countries, but it's an opportunity on Wall Street.
This month alone, investment firms unleashed a buffet of ETFs and ETNs to play price moves in commodities, such as grains and livestock.
Deutsche Bank Tuesday issued a batch of ETNs that supersize the long and short returns of a basket of corn, soybeans, sugar and wheat futures: DB Agriculture Double Short , DB Agriculture Double Long . They also issued DB Agriculture Short and DB Agriculture Long .
Supersizing Returns
The ETNs can be viewed as leveraged plays on PowerShares DB Agriculture (AMEX:DBA - News). The ETF has shot up 57% in the past 12 months and 20% year to date. It sports a beefy Relative Strength Rating of 96.
Earlier this month, Swiss-giant UBS forayed into the ETN market with its E-TRACs: CMCI Agriculture (NYSEArca:UAG - News), CMCI Livestock (NYSEArca:UBC - News), CMCI Food (NYSEArca:FUD - News). They are tied to the UBS Bloomberg Constant Maturity Commodity Index. E-TRACS UBS Bloomberg CMCI Food Index includes wheat, corn, hog, soybeans, cocoa, cattle, hogs, orange juice, sugar and coffee.
Too Many Issues
The Elements platform, managed by Merrill Lynch (NYSE:MER - News), launched the MLCX Livestock Elements ETN (AMEX:LSO - News). It tracks futures contracts in lean hogs (30%) and live cattle (70%).
Lehman Bros. (NYSE:LEH - News) joined the party in February with the Opta Lehman Brothers Commodity Index Pure Beta Agriculture Total Return ETN (AMEX:EOH - News). It provides exposure to grains and softs (coffee, cotton and sugar).
Money managers say commodities offer good portfolio diversification because they move independently from the stock market.
"Agricultural commodities are a long-term story based on a rapidly growing global population," said Anthony Welch of Sarasota Capital Strategies. "It's OK to have a small piece of a portfolio in ag commodities, but we would prefer a more balanced approach, such as RJI (Elements Roger's International ETN (AMEX:RJI - News)), which has ag, metals and energy."
Some issues are too specialized for most investors, analysts say.
"When we see that many products targeting such a specialized niche launch in such close succession, it's worrisome," said Jeff Ptak, director of ETF research at Morningstar. "Often, that kind of product issuance marks a top."
Bon appetite!
AIMster
Well, might want to get out the Ray-Ban sunglasses and stock up on some Schering-Plough stock, makers of (among a lot of other things) Coppertone sunscreen products! Given Toofuzzy's (and everybody else's) interest in alternative energy sources, nothing like looking up at that big nuclear furnace in the sky... Now we've an ETF for it:
Solar enthusiasts are eagerly awaiting earnings results from SunPower, which kicks off the industry's first-quarter earnings season on Thursday. They may also be interested to know that Claymore launched the first solar exchange-traded fund today.
The Claymore/MAC Global Solar Energy Index fund tracks a group of 25 mostly overseas solar companies, including equipment makers, materials producers, and service providers. Almost all of the index constituents are profitable. (IndexUniverse points out that the universe of publicly traded companies with interests in solar energy worldwide is small: roughly 200 companies.)
Guess what the fund's ticker symbol is? TAN.
So hopefully investing in such won't leave you burned and might be something as conducive to profits as said star rising daily in the East. If this works we may yet see a revival of the Egyptian heresy religion championed by the late Pharaoh Akhenaton: sun worship! <grin>. And y'know we wouldn't be the first...
With regards to your second criterion of a buy OK when price is the lowest you paid, here you have to be careful that the stock is not a deep diver. At least when I buy and I know the stock has been lower it means the stock has a support and has bounced back in the past.
I agree. That's why I'm off individual stocks and sticking closely to CEF/ETF's - less chance of making it all the way to the bottom. BTO, for instance, John Hancock Bank & Thrift Fund is waaaaaay off due to the financial markets themselves being very much out of favor right now.
Thanks for the cautionary reminder!
Best,
AIMster
So buying additional shares of stock with a "2" value are the most efficient at reducing my average cost.
Hmmmm I suppose one could add a specific percentage lower than the lowest price so you're not just going by a few pennies.
Since SAFE is commonly used at 10% I've set that up as the minimum percentage below the previous lowest price before the spreadsheet will signal a second confirmation. Doesn't mean that I will buy it, this just shows me which are the most efficient right now in terms of lowering the average cost per share.
My personal investment objective is to ultimately hold 100% of available funds in a diverse range of good quality, large well established companies, bought at a discount, that pay above average dividends (income) - that in turn grows both capital value and income at an above inflation rate. Buy-and-hold of good stock, purchased at a low price.
It's all too easy to see when stocks were cheaply priced with hindsight, however at the time it is much more difficult to see if you are overpaying for a stock or picking up a bargain.
Hi, Clive,
One answer to your question is I'm in the process of setting up a spreadsheet to help measure one's progress in this regard. What it does is keep a list of each transaction for each stock held, sorted by descending price so one can see what was the minimum and maximum I've paid for this particular stock so far.
I then have a column that calculates the average price. I'm setting up now a buy recommendation. As currently configured, it uses a two part recommendation process:
1) Is the current price less than the average price? if yes, ok.
2) Is the current price less than the lowest price I've paid so far? if yes, OK!
So buying additional shares of stock with a "2" value are the most efficient at reducing my average cost.
Hmmmm I suppose one could add a specific percentage lower than the lowest price so you're not just going by a few pennies.
In progress...
Best,
AIMster
re: GE
Hi, MM,
GE's rather moribund for an AIM stock, at least that's been the case for the last couple of years. You may have better luck with it using it in a "dogs of the Dow" type strategy of holding on and taking whatever profit in a year + 1 day. Meanwhile, enjoy the dividend!
Best,
AIMster
Since Jeffrey Weber's recent visit to the board, I mentioned where I'd found his book again. Well once I'd found it, might as well re-read it, right?
One idea he mentioned that struck me as interesting is the idea of putting in as much as possible into the various machines so as to obtain the most benefit, long term. I suppose he wrote the text at the time when Lichello's 2/3rd stock, 1/3rd cash reserve was the current version in AIM thinking.
Where this leads me to thinking is that one could have a "slow AIM" function going where say you set the cash reserve to such and such a percentage. Once you accumulate say one or two percent above that, either through dividend or savings accumulation, go ahead and put it in, either in an existing machine, or start up a new one.
AIMster
Re: #2............
We used to have a green sandbox. Does that count?
That would be telling. One thing to note in the opening sequence which I believe was unintentional was when McGoohan walks the corridor after exiting his Lotus 7, he opens the doors marked, in an apt description of the series, "Way Out." A UK expression for exit, much as the later "clearance" in our parlance becomes in theirs, "Max Headroom."
BCNU,
AIMster
Hi, Mark,
Here's a wild hare of an idea... (I just put down some 'red eye' coffee - a double shot of espresso into regular brewed coffee, kicks up the flavor and the buzz, good for the early morning jumpstart)!
Anyway, would there be some way to have the default AI calculation algorithm running so it would dynamically feed the results into a web page? That way it would be self-maintaining. Maybe offer choices of 1,3 5 and 10 year performance calculations to the prospective buyer, with the explanation that results over various periods of time may vary.
Hmm, as "The Brain" would put it, "are you pondering what I'm pondering?" It seems if you got that core built that it may become feasible to transplant AI as a web-based service, my thinking here being that you could switch to a subscription model and have a more steady cash-flow from this work instead of the per-license fee here and there once people find their way to the website or via Tom's site and the iHub boards.
Of course a lot of other AI users may want to also quote "The Brain" to ME, "If I could reach you I would hurt you!" for making such a suggestion, as we've gotten comfortable with the standalone version (except when the connection to the registration server gets finicky. <grin>).
Just a thought...
AIMster
<OT>
What gets Me is, why didn't He pocket a fork or broken teacup or something to pop the stinking thing when it came near Him?
Well, I guess Rover was supposed to be impervious to the commonsense stuff like that!!! According to the stories, though, "Rover" in real life was very thin-skinned, they went through some 6,000 balloons!!!
McGoohan has said he'd have probably done it as a miniseries, but it was done before the miniseries idea was developed. So some episodes are more of a stretch than others. Still, all in all, one of the most interesting cult-TV programs to date and certainly inspires continued reflection on the ideas McGoohan was considering. Some still are very resonant, over 40 years later. Heightened security, national identity cards, all our lives distilled into databases...
Opening Sequence - one of the longest of any TV show:
http://www.youtube.com/v/HRPDO63rI1E&hl
A central issue of the whole show, especially in the computer age - the right of the individual to be individual, not some inanimate record someplace.
<OT>
Be seeing You,
WB
Hmmm? Could it be in this little virtual Village of people we've another Prisoner fan in our midst? Six of One, half dozen of the other for sure!
For those who haven't the foggiest clue as to what I'm referring to, it was a short lived 17 episode enigmatic television program made in the 1960's by Patrick McGoohan, fresh off his success in "Secret Agent," aka "Danger Man."
More information may be found here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Prisoner
Though considered campy in some respects, it was a very prescient show, particularly with the high level of CCTV surveillance in the UK and starting to manifest in places like New York City as well. If you've nothing to hide, why should you mind being watched?
Be Seeing you,
AIMster
Mark,
Not that you've anything else on your plate <grin> but I was browsing the AI website. http://www.automaticinvestor.com/performance.html
The MSFT performance ends in 2002 - you may, when you get one of those "round tuits" want to update the site to make things more current. This older stuff after so much time starts to give the impression of the website being a bit stale.
Maintenance!
Best,
AIMster
<OT>
About 14 years ago they did a major rebuild of some roadways through here, broke apart a two-way highway into two segments of one-way for several blocks, twice as wide, of course. They did a pretty good job on it though, with granite curbing in place now and generally well maintained. Once in a while it works okay...