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RE: Monthly Reports.
I haven't been tabulating like I used to as it is time consuming and is down the To-Do list a ways.
Sorry though.
I really enjoyed that process and the conversations it generated.
Hi everyone.
Just checking in to let y'all know that I'm still here, but still very busy with other stuff.
I'm terribly behind reading all of the posts as well.
But, GIEW via LD-AIM is still very active.
Hi Gang! I'm still here.
We've been quite busy lately and I simply haven't prioritized our repartee out here.
I apologize.
I've been getting caught up on the posts and have gotten to November I think.
I've continued with my AIM program and it's still chugging along.
I'll get back to all of you next opportunity.
Hi Toof.
Thanks for the suggestion.
All my AIM activity is in an IRA, so no tax consequences yet.
Thanks Clive.
Hi Clive:
I'm not following.
This chart puts XIV up against VIXY and the Wilshire 5000.
And neither tracks the overall market represented by Wilshire 5000.
I'm not sure which is short or long.
VIXY is described as 'Short Term' VIX futures and is not leveraged (1.00).
I'm not able to see how XIV is described.
Congrats Toof!
Of course since XIV is a reverse ETF, you can guess how my VIXY has done over that time frame.
Since 6/13 it has moved from $54.70 to $36.50; -33% overall.
But it had moved substantially within that range.
I had a Buy on 7/8 at 41.25. Next would be at $35.
During June through that point I had a Buy, Sell, Buy, Buy, Sell, Buy.
It's pretty bouncy!
And not leveraged either.
Congrats Clive!
I was just catching up on the posts here since I was on vacation recently.
Obviously, I was not paying attention to the numbers until I saw post # 41001.
Otherwise I too would have been playing 'Post-e-mon Go'.
The 1000's are elusive.
Once I find my list I'll update 'Grub History' and get it posted.
Hi Tom.
You at Road America this weekend?
Isn't FSLR being bought back by Elon Musk?
Not sure but it rang a bell in my personal 'cloud'.
To Geezer's point earlier.
What bugs me about the alternative energy industry is that it is heavily subsidized with my money (and yours).
Government should not be picking winners and losers. (IMHO of course).
Allen.
I was stupid. Yeah, stupid.
We've all been there more times than we even admit to ourselves!
So.....Join the Club!
Thanks Allen.
I need to do the buys/sells by hand as the EOD/EOW/EOM prices rarely match the the AIM dictated buy/sell prices.
That's because Lichello didn't 'pre-plan' his transaction prices (like the rest of us now do).
He used the end of day, week, month and went through his (SV-PC) +/- Safe to get to the transaction $. Then divide that by the share price.
Hi Toof.
Disregard....
I just now saw your 2nd reply.
Congrats Toof!
WRI looks to be an interesting play.
How long have you been running that program?
Tripped a Sell yesterday on SLV.
It occurred last in the after hours session (like 7:30 PM EDT).
Sold 8% of Actual (5% of the program) for a 12% LIFO gain.
Interesting that this is my 3rd consecutive Sell on SLV, all in the last 3 months.
All after a rather inactive year 2015 (one sell almost exactly a year ago).
Preceded from Nov 2013 to Nov 2014 by 9 consecutive Buys and one Sell in Dec.
Looks like the 'smart money' is starting to push back into Gold and Silver.
I'm fine with that insofar as I own enough to get 20 consecutive Sells before running out of Actual shares.
Of course if that were to happen, my regular equity holdings would probably be well under water.
Sounds more complicated than I'd ever be willing to commit the time.
HIya Toof.
I am using XIV in a taxable account and SVXY in my ROTH IRA with some options.
I recall that you do.
Do you balance them out by taking some profit from one and invest those proceeds in the other?
Hi Allen.
you say "no safe" I take this to mean neither buy or sell, correct?
Yes.
What percentage cash did you start with? Or are you using a common pool to handle the money for the buys?
Common Cash Reserve for all of GIEW. It's been that way since 2003.
If so, how did you set up LD-AIM to start with?
I just use the Sell side settings in my worksheet.
The key inputs are Total $ Available & Price per share..
That and the # of Sells and AIM settings will determine the Actual and Virtual shares.
Caught a Sell in the premarket this morning.
My Silver ETF (SLV) tripped my GTC order this morning @ 17.45.
Sold 9% of Actual, 5% of the program for a nice 10% LIFO gain.
Looks like another up day towards the open, so VIXY has dropped close to my next Buy price of 9.60. I had a round trip on it over 24 hours last week, buying at 9.05 and selling at 11.35.
Just follow the bouncing ball!
My guess would GIEW stands for Grabber's International Equity Warehouse.
Winner Winner, Chicken Dinner!
Thanks Jon.
Hi again Adam
Too bad the decline did not happen near a market bottom then we would have some nice buying opportunities.
Well 2 days of steep declines pushed 4 of mine low enough.
Buys yesterday on BX, C, Cree and MU.
The MU Buy was @ 12.15, 15% lower than my Sell on last Thursday @ 14.35.
And it was for 40% more shares than I sold.
Lots of volatility out there right now.
This morning's premarket:
BX +2.74%
C +3.30%
CREE +2.11%
MU +3.68%
There's a difference between trading and investing.
Hi Clive.
Apologies to all who read beyond this point.
No offense intended.
Corbyn (current leader of the opposition (Labour/red)) has relatively extreme history and if/when he gets in has plans for a great wealth redistribution which has massive amounts of support over here (revolt against capitalism).
I'm not trying to get political here, but how stupid is that logic?
I did not see it as a revolt against capitalism per se.
From my point of view, Brexit was a revolt against Globalism and the Elites; and for Sovereignty.
Free market capitalism should always win out versus socialism/fascism.
If and only if it is unfettered with burdensome regulations from unelected (and therefore unaccountable) bureaucrats along with their willing accomplices 'the special interests', the Elites. I think you'll find those folks in Brussels.
BTW: In Russia, they call the Elites, Oligarchs. Same difference.
Corrupt as they come.
We have them here as well.
They're all in D.C. in the congress and on K street picking winners and losers. (They always win).
A pox on their house!
The timing of the eventual collapse of Corbyn's vision is determined by when you run out of other people's money and can't pay off the dept incurred.
Look at Venezuela. Total collapse. Who's the richest individual in that country? Hugo Chavez' daughter. And she probably doesn't even live there.
Puerto Rico on this side of the pond is totally corrupt. About to default on $2 billion.
Congress will bail them out.
No consequences.
No accountability.
My money.
My guess is that there are plenty of Brits, who like me, have worked for over 40 years and are fed up with it.
Again, no offense intended.
Hi again Allen
The one that really counts is the minimum $20k position size as you have pointed out several times. ... I have an ... IRA that is only around $25k and have not figured out how to handle that. Putting it all into one position scares the s#$% out of me,
Good point!
That is exactly why I created LD-AIM.
During the 2001-2002 downturn, I had 4 Classic AIM programs that were underwater and going nowhere.
I sold a portion of Actual shares of those and converted those into Virtual. I think I liquidated one entirely.
I parlayed the various proceeds into about 22 LD-AIM programs during the recovery of 2003 ending with a 77% increase, easily beating the major market indices.
In my opinion, you could convert your 3 positions into maybe 6-8 LD-AIM programs.
As for AIMing ETFs?
I would do some zig zag analysis on them and work with a much tighter range of settings.
I do this with my Silver ETF (SLV). Essentially trading 5%-15% of the program shares (Act+Virt), no Safe.
Since April of 2013 when I started it, I have had 17 Buys and 8 Sells. I currently own more than 5x my initial actual # shares purchased.
If I liquidated at today's close I would only realize a total return of 5%. But today's closing price is 23% lower than my initial buy. And I do not expect SLV will ever go to Zero.
LD-AIM just like Classic AIM will accumulate shares over time and reduce your cost per share. The difference between the 2 approaches in my opinion is that you don't have too many $ tied up in an initial position that you are likely never going to sell (look at Lichello's original example).
Hi Allen.
how do I enter this into the spreadsheet? Do I create two entries for the day, one at the buy price and one at the EOD price? Or do I just enter the number of shares in the "Action Taken - ### Shares," overwriting the formula for that cell and leaving the "Price Close" at the closing price
I don't have a clue!
What spreadsheet are you using?
In any event.
AIM buys add shares and half the Transaction dollars to PC.
EOD price would just be used to calculate valuation (SV) as of that day's close.
Hi Adam.
The others were sitting mostly near the top of the hold zone so the pullback put things into the middle of hold zone. Too bad the decline did not happen near a market bottom then we would have some nice buying opportunities.
Ditto for GIEW (dammit). I had been very close to a Sell on 5 holdings yesterday.
With 30 minutes to go in the regular session I have had no transactions.
Albeit VIXY is within a nickel so it might get a sell.
Overall GIEW is down less than 1% on the day.
I did have a pleasant surprise though when I logged into my account earlier.
I had a Sell on MU after hours last night and didn't even know it.
I thought the confirmation email I received was for my Buy on VIXY yesterday but must have also included the Sell on MU.
The Sell value almost covered the Buy in VIXY so cash is pretty much where it was before this roller coaster took off!
As Tom said, we live in interesting times.
Thanks Clive!
That's a great perspective review of your situation over there.
Much appreciated.
Hiya Toof.
My VIXY is up 16% at the moment, but still a $1 away from my sell order.
It got to within 50 cents in the premarket and at the open, but has pulled back.
It would have been nice to have gotten a big one day return on that buy I got yesterday. Could still happen but central banks worldwide have stepped in to calm the markets so that doesn't help the VIX. But it has been a nice hedge for me despite the Contango disadvantage.
I was really surprised that my SLV hasn't tripped it's sell order yet.
It is only up only 2%. Congrats on your Sell on SLW though!
OK. Back to my regular job....
I love it!
Obviously you stay up later than I!!!!!
I could not stop watching.
Of course overslept this morning after getting only 5 hours of sleep.
Then I entered a number of Buy orders just prior to the open.
Not one has executed yet since the market bounced back after the open.
But the day is young!
GIEW is down 1% overall with the markets down 2-3%
Clerks in Brussels decided to ban electric tea kettles in the interest of Climate Change. That probably put the 'Leave' votes over the hurdle.
One does not appreciate giving up one's tea!
BTW: I'm surprised that our London correspondent Clive hasn't mentioned anything yet from across the pond.
6Hi All:
RE: Brexit
I'm watching the simulcast from Fox Business here and Sky News there.
Amazing.
US markets futures are in a tailspin after a pretty big gain earlier today given that the 'Remain' vote was looking to win.
As a result I was able to make a considerable Buy in VIXY.
A minute ago, both ITV and the BBC called it for the 'Leave'.
Sky News also just called it likewise.
The Brexit vote is roiling markets worldwide.
US market futures down 3-4% at the moment.
Oil is down >6%
Gold is up 6+%
I'm cancelling my GTC Sell order on VIXY placed earlier today.
It is likely to price considerably higher than that in the premarket.
Silver may trip a Sell as well.
The prognositcators are calling for 'significant near term volatility' for a time.
No kidding!
Tomorrow is going to be very interesting.
Hi old timer!
Tom put many years of effort into both the bulletin board and the users web-site. I'm still marveled by that commitment.
Then he got a real job!
But frankly, I'm not so sure that there would be more to add to it were it resurrected.
I would think that most if not all the important questions relative to AIM had been answered by Tom over the years he managed the site.
It's still a great reference that's for sure.
Lichello didn't seem to need a timely, real example of a real stock to explain his concept.
In fact it would've probably muddied the water.
I'm guessing that higher price stocks/ETFs tend to have less volatility and therefore less chance for AIM to do its magic.
Yup! That's been my observation as well.
A corollary to that is that cheap stocks can be quite active with AIM.
Bottom line though is that stock selection is still most important first step.
Hi Allen.
What spreadsheet are your using?
As Tom said, Mr. Lichello never worked with or cared about how many shares to Buy or Sell.
It was always $.
# of shares was derived by dividing the $ by the price.
Come to think of it, he really never talked about minimums either.
If memory serves (and that is questionable with me), he may have mentioned that it wasn't worth the effort to trade less than 5% of Stock Value.
Somehow over the years, in order to preset Buy and Sell prices, we've derived calcs to 'reverse engineer' Lichello's basic approach. Minimums came into play from that effort.
But again, my memory may not be as precise on this score as it used to be.
Hi Tom!
Congrats on the early productivity with CGNX.
Ahh CGNX.
That hasn't been brought up lately at all.
I never had a program with it that I can recall, but do remember that you and a few other of us old timers did well with it for quite a long time.
And didn't you use CGNX in some of the early explanatory bits at your site?
Been away too long.
Allen.
I've never been able to understand what is " magic " about a month.
It's always seemed arbitrary too me with respect to AIM.
I can see taking a breather on the Buy side so as to avoid catching falling knives. But in my mind, 'a bird in the hand....regardless of the date...' ?
Hi Allen.
The reason I am looking at this is trying to see if it is possible to create settings that work with shorter range positions. Many ETFs have a relatively narrow 52 week range so AIM, in its standard form, never gets a buy or sell in any reasonable time if you don't buy at the top or bottom of the 52 week cycle.
Agreed.
I run my Silver ETF (SLV) with total range of ~10% for the same reason. Even so, in the last year, I've had just 1 Buy (last July) and 1 Sell (last month). However, the previous 2 years I had 24 trades (17 Buys, 7 Sells).
I believe this was due more to the long slow slide in Silver price more than my settings which really haven't changed.
Of course with that kind of transaction pattern, I've loaded up on shares; with more than 5x the # of Actual shares than my initial position.
Bottom line is that I believe one's settings do need to fit the holding as much as is possible. Maybe you should do a Zig Zag analysis on your holding to try and zero in on your range.
I moved one stock, GNL, into AIM wanting to reduce the size of the position and played with the buy safe because I did not want to get any more.
I'd just set up a LD-AIM program with 10 Sells and 0 Buys. Then just don't Buy any more regardless of the price action.
Thanks for sharing Tombo.
Your story sounds familiar to others we've heard out here over the years.
I hear ya when it comes to buying as price falls. Especially immeditely after you established that initial core position at a siginificantly higher price!
One of the nice aspects of LD-AIM is that the initial core position is much smaller. So those subsequent Buys sting a little less.
If you've read any of the background info here, you see that another oft used tactic is to delay consecutive Buys for 30 day. Arbitrary for sure, but sometimes you have to pump the brakes.
Thanks Tom.
Forrest Gump would probably say something like 'Simple is as Simple Does'.
Mr. Lichello would agree I think.
Thanks Tom.
Forrest Gump would probably say something like 'Simple is as Simple Does'.
Mr. Lichello would agree I think.