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Register for free to join our community of investors and share your ideas. You will also get access to streaming quotes, interactive charts, trades, portfolio, live options flow and more tools.
Once we work the kinks out I hope to port it over to Android, absolutely.
thanks!
I'm glad to say that we've released an AIM program for the iOS, called Undertraders Stock Advisor. It's only $20. It's version 1. We'll be adding more stuff, but trying to keep it simple. It works on the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad.
You can read more about it on www.undertrader.com.
I really appreciate all of the help with AIM Tom and everyone else has given me throughout the years. Now that that project is out the door, I'm hoping to be able to concentrate on message bases and talking about stocks more this year.
Thanks to everyone. Here's hoping for a prosperous year for everyone!
Invest in peace...
Does anyone have an iPhone or an iPad that would be interested in helping me test my new AIM-based App? I could use a second set of eyes on it. It's almost done. I've tried to keep it extremely simple for the 'novice' trader and then I hid an advanced screen in the app where you can tweak the settings all you want if you so desire.
Drop me an email at theundertrader AT gmail.com if you're interested and I'll send you the information I'd need from you to make you a file that will allow you to install the app.
Thanks,
Steve
Intervals
Has anyone done any big tests regarding the intervals between trading? The book suggests weekly or monthly or whatever, but I'm curious how many people trade using triggered trades (trade when you hit a trigger) vs daily vs weekly vs monthly.
It seems that in this market full of turmoil, it's better to trade daily (or every other day), especially with the huge swings we're going through.
Thoughts?
-takr
I would never invest in an Enron. I only invest in name monopolies, like I said, so Coke, Pepsi, McDonalds, essentially, companies that people don't want to do without. You could find 6 rats in a 6 pack of Coke and the next day people would go out and buy more. That's pretty good safety as far as that company is concerned. Costco is always so busy that I have to plan an hour ahead just to stand in line. These are the types of companies I try to stick to.
Yes, it's true, a company can get knocked on it's ass quickly and stay there (Sears, K-mart, etc...) however, I wouldn't consider those stores name monopolies. They are dime a dozen stores. I avoid those. I do, however, invest in Wal-mart and Target. They are both at least diversified in their products and their prices are affordable.
Bottom line is you never know and sometimes it just comes down to a gut feeling.
Invest in peace!
Possibly, but is Coke below it's averages really a risk over the long-term? I don't think so. I think Coke at $30 is a much better buy than Coke at $70 if it's average is at $50. Over the long-term, the law of averages will bring it back towards it's average or the stock will run up. Coke isn't going to go to $0 ever. Pepsi could buy Coke perhaps, but then the stock will retain value as well. I think if you buy Coke at $70 you are risking $20 a share towards the average. That's a pretty big risk there, but like you said, it's all how you look at it.
My strategy to avoid the divers when you purchase is to only buy a stock when it's already below it's 50 and 200 day moving averages. The farther below those, the better, if it's a good company. Then you aren't falling from a high back down to it's average, which I see happen a lot. Try to get into the stock when it's already low, if it goes down, you get an extra discount, if it goes up, profit city.
I also try to avoid volatile industries like banking, airlines, cell phones, etc and stick to tried and true name monopolies like Coke, Pepsi, Harley Davidson, Wal-Mart, Costco, McDonalds, etc....companies that won't go out of business so I can hold onto them for the long haul if I get in too early or whatever.
While AIM may not always be the best strategy with every stock (Apple going from $20 to $200 to $120 for example), it will save your ass and it will create structure for your trading, which is the #1 problem I see. I don't have to think of when to sell or buy, I KNOW when to sell or buy and until those triggers are hit, I can safely ignore my investments. I look only when the markets are closed and usually only trade every other Friday night or so. Makes it simple, which is the key in my book.
Invest in peace...
Thank you so much Tom, you're a life saver!
Historic Ex-dividend dates.
I was given the task of fixing a friends iClub stock stuff and the only way to enter a dividend payment is if you put the ex-dividend date for each payout. Well, I can find the latest ex-dividend dates at smart money, but I can't find previous ex-dividend dates for the ETF's they own. Anyone know of a way to find that information?
Thanks!
Two more ETF's to look at are MDY which is the Midcap Fund and DVY which is a fund made up of all Dividend paying stocks. I own both of those as well as SPY and have done well on all of them. Nowhere near as well as I've done on straight stocks like Apple, Chesapeake Energy (CHK) or Tim Hortons Internation (THI), but a respectable return and with much less risk than the companies.
Good luck,
- Takr
I have a stock that matches exactly what you're saying, which is Ebay. I got it around $38ish I guess and it's languished around $30-35 for a year now. I'm not sure what to do with it. I'm waiting to see how their Christmas sales are and the rumor that they may be selling Skype has me intrigued, but realistically, this is a stock that after a year of not making profits, I should dump.
The Vealie (thanks Tom) is a tool I use a lot. Apple is a good example with that one. I bought Apple at $60 or so. It's run up to $180. I've sold maybe 5% of my holdings in Apple (to generate cash to buy another stock) but then I just Vealied Apple all the way up to it's current price.
I never have a buy or sell pre-set unless I want out of a position, then I have a stop loss. I wrote a software program that I run every Friday and it just tells me which stocks are at a sell and which are at a buy and how many shares to do of each, then I decide if I want to stay in those positions or not. Pretty simple really.
The thing I use AIM for is that nudge, "Hey, this stock dropped, could be a good buy!" Or "Hey, you've made quite a bit of profit, you may want to move some shares to cash." And then I do the amount AIM suggests because it makes the whole thing simple. Less stress = better for me.
With my desire to move to ETF's, my concern is there won't be enough movement to trigger much of anything due to the over-diversification within ETF's.
But, to answer your question, in my practice, I just leave the PC and the Safes at the defaults and don't mess with the settings. I've made plenty of money without tweaking. I try to just get good returns and not shoot for the best returns because ultimately, being rich vs being insanely rich isn't worth the stress to me.
One thing people don't mention when doing all of these comparisons is that it's all based on knowledge of what has happened, which is way different than knowledge on what is GOING to happen.
If you had bought and held AOL or AIMed AOL from the 90's til now, you'd be very poor and had left thousands of dollars of profit on the table. There are dozens and dozens, if not hundreds of stocks that performed poorly no matter what strategy you used.
Also, the average return of 11% (or thereabouts) for the stock market is not a figure most people get because most people move their investments or their investments don't fall in the structured 'year' comparison or they get in at the top of the market, etc...
The reason AIM works in my mind is a few reasons.
1) I stress and worry about the market way less because I know on the 1st of each month, I have a strategy and a plan and it doesn't waiver based on what I think. It's all laid out for me. The market lost me over a years salary in 3 days a few weeks ago and I didn't care. I knew it would work out over the long-term. (Though, this did make me think about an ETF strategy vs an individual stock strategy.)
2) It lowers my risk by forcing me to take profits off the table. Even if I pull profits too early, I'm still ahead and can't complain. As long as my net worth is increasing, I'm doing good for me.
3) It generates extra cash to purchase shares at lower prices, increasing my number of shares. This is key to me and something most people overlook. The number of shares you have is the most important thing for profit in my opinion. The more shares you amass, the less it has to move to give you a good profit.
Right now, I'm heavily in individual stocks, with Apple (aapl) and Tim Hortons (THI) being my main stakes, but I'm seriously considering lowering my risk all together and putting 80% of my cash into dividend paying ETF's and taking 20% of my money and investing in individual stocks (the opposite of what I have right now). Yes, my return will probably go down (I've averaged about 21% returns a year for 5 years), but my risk will drop significantly.
While looking at past performance is a good metric, I don't think you can base the future on it entirely. If the Lakers beat the Bulls every year for the past 100 years, they still have only a 50% chance of winning this year, even though they've won 100% of the time for 100 years. Same with the market and I think people need to keep that in mind when evaluating the risk involved going forward.
Might I suggest adding in the DVY (Dow Jones Select Dividend Index ETF) to get yourself some dividend income added to your portfolio as well. Couldn't hurt and it's a pretty well diversified fund and you know the Companies are doing pretty well if they're able to pay dividends.
- Takr
Mine is actually written in Director, of all things. Just simpler for me. If you want a beta, drop me an email at thetestingguys@gmail.com and I'll get ya a copy. It'd be nice to get someone's opinions. Just know, it's still slightly buggy and some of the buttons aren't going where they'll eventually go. :)
Mine tracks your trades, tracks your stocks, gives you 'advice' (IE: The AIM advice), tracks your gains and losses, all of that stuff. It's all tracked for you. Just needs some debugging.
It also has a watcher list feature built in that uses my PIG Ratio (top secret!) that will weed out stocks on your watch list that are currently overpriced and only show you stocks that fall within my PIG Ratio as potential buys.
It works for me, I'm not sure what other people would think, but as soon as I get some more error checking in, I'll probably throw a beta on here to get everyones opinions.
I've been working on one for awhile, it's about 90% done right now. It'll be for Mac and PC, but I've been thinking of porting it to run on the web.
My program doesn't have any extra bells and whistles really, but it does do AIM, allows you to modify the safes, allows you to track your dividends and all of that stuff. Hopefully I can get it finished soon, just haven't had time to work on it.
Thanks Aimster!
Anyone know of a site that shows the S&P yearly return percentages? I need the S&P return for 2003-2006.
Thanks,
Takr
Though I love all the math, when math is used in comparing stocks and performance, it's all based on known values after the fact. The thing AIM gives that you can't put into numbers is peace of mind. I have a strategy, an easy to follow strategy and one that is creating more money for me and my family. It brings peace of mind to my trading.
Is it the best way? Does it matter? If I make a few million in my lifetime, do I really care if I could have made $5 million instead of $3 million? Is it worth the uncertainty of a 'non-structured' strategy? I really don't think so.
With AIM, at least the way I do it, I know I don't need to watch the market. AIM is watching it for me. I know what date I'm going to make trades on and until then, the market can do whatever it wants.
The bottom line for me, in the past 6 years I've used it, A.I.M. has worked for me, made me a lot of money, saved my butt a few times and I haven't had to stress about the stock market for years. That is enough reason to use A.I.M. for me.
- Takr
A friend of mine made a good point about housing and the kids today. The kids today want to own a house equal or similar to the one they grew up in, so they're immediately looking for a 4 bedroom home with a pool as a starter home. What the youth don't understand is that their parents pooled two incomes and built up to that house for 20 or 30 years in some cases. They didn't (usually) just buy that big family house when they turned 18. They bought small houses and kept trading them up and kept investing in themselves to be able to afford the larger house. They also bought that large house for $100k and not $500k.
I think it's the whole entitlement era we're in where kids who are 8 have cell phones and wear Gucci and stuff. That's not how I grew up. You earned stuff. I did chores for weeks and weeks to afford things. Kids don't even have chores anymore!
Ah well, at least I know my family will be taken care of. I just hope the country still exists when my kids grow up because we're on a bad, bad path as a country.
- Takr
There should be no temporary solution for people. They are buying way over their heads. Some people have mortgage payments that are 50% of their two income take home pay! That's insane. A lady on my street has her $500,000 house mortgaged for $650,000. That's insane! She's paying for her $5000 fountain in her front yard over 30 years on her second mortgage.
People need to take responsibility for their own actions. The banks made the decision to lend to people they knew couldn't afford it and then they sold those loans to other institutions, who also bought them knowing that they were insane risk.
Should I get cash back for any dumb trade I make in the stock market? Or should I get extra cash for selling out before I should have? No. Never. Did I get reimbursed when K-Mart decided one day that their stock was worth $0 and the next day created a brand new stock worth $30 a share, leaving me out the $10,000 I invested in K-Mart when it was at $1 knowing it would come back? I didn't get a penny and I shouldn't have. I knew the risk when I made the investment and I have to suffer the consequences when my luck runs out.
Same with home buyers. I feel horribly for people who hit hard times. That's awful. However, if you're buying a house and your payments are paycheck to paycheck and you have no emergency fund, you had no business buying the house in the first place and if your payment is over 25% of your monthly income, you over bought. It's simple math, but it seems half of America can't do simple math anymore. It's all leverage this and loan that and HELOC that and lease that. People are broke and just don't get it.
:) Have a nice day. ;)
Well, I'm not sure where you live, but where I live in California, house values almost tripled in 5 years. The last I checked, in a search for 3 bedroom homes with over 6000 feet of land in my city alone, there were almost 150 for sale and I live in a small city. A major majority of the houses for sale in my area are shorts. People bought houses they couldn't afford with ARMS thinking they'd get rich. As all of these ARMS are coming due, they are unable to pay.
Just to afford a house in my city, many houses have 2 or 3 families in them just to make the payment. You can't buy a single family home for less than $500,000 in my city. That's insane. It's down right stupid if you ask me. I bought my home, which is 'worth' in the $500,000 range, for $160,000 just 10 years ago.
Perhaps what we're seeing in California is different than most of the country, but things are really, really bad here.
I don't think lowering the rates is a long-term fix and I really don't think the government should be bailing out people who made horrible decisions with their money. It's just going to train people that even if they screw up, it's ok.
Think of it this way, the Fed is teaching people that if 'sales are bad' they're going to have a sale. Eventually, people will only shop when a sale is going on, (which is one of the major problems in retail and why Apple has a sale 1 day a year.) You can't just lower rates to keep everyone happy. Corrections and down right smackdowns need to occur to keep people in check.
- Takr
But why would the Fed cut the rate? To put more people in debt more? To increase the amount the banks are currently losing? Creating more credit won't solve things, that's what's caused the problem with real estate and credit cards being at insane amounts of foreclosures and late payments.
The banks are going to need to recoup the massive amount of money they've lost on sub-prime loans as well.
I just don't see how lowering the rate is going to help anyone. It will simply amplify the problems people are currently facing.
- Takr
Either way, A.I.M. keeps me safer than most.
I don't have a 16.4% gain anymore, after today I have a 17.67% gain, before dividends. :) Horray for AIM!
Sales triggered today for Sun, Microsoft and Apple, going to Vealie the M$ and Apple, but take that Sun cash and run with it.
- Takr
www.undertrader.com
That's funny, I checked my returns today and I'm up 16.4% (without adding in dividends). Looks like AIM is pretty consistent in beating those dorkfish in the suits on Wall Street.
Funny thing is, they spent millions of dollars and 16 hours a day researching stuff. I spent 10 minutes every Friday afternoon. :)
Thanks for posting guys, love to read the success stories.
Invest in peace...
Takr
www.undertrader.com
The only reason I own SUNW is because of their announcement that they were partnering with Google. I believe the company stinks and that management stinks there. I jumped in with the intention to grab profit and ditch the sinking ship. I just keep moving a trailing stop-loss behind the gains on this one. I just don't see SUNW dropping to the point where it would trigger AIM purchases and have enough Umph to get back up the hill to a buy anytime in the near future. I've made a ton off of it though. :)
- Steve
www.undertrader.com
Thanks Aimster, you rock! From that it looks like the Dow did this:
2003 - 25.3% gain
2004 - 3.1% gain
2005 - 1% loss
2006 - So far, approx 11.9% gain
Me with AIM and half-assing AIM at that no dividend income added.
2003 - 39.36%
2004 - 24.77%
2005 - 10.41%
2006 - 11.26% so far
I'm averaging a 19.28% return a year for 4 years and this years total will go way up before the end of the year with all of the discounted stocks I bought. Looks like AIM works to me.
BTW, I probably spent 10 total hours trading and researching a year. Go AIM!
Does anyone know where I could find what the gain for the Dow Jones Industrial Average was for the following years in a percentage? I want to see how much I beat the Dow by each year:
2003-2006?
Thanks,
Steve
I'm with Tom, I've been using my modified version of AIM for about 5 years now and I haven't really had a job for the last 4 years and I've had returns between 24 and 17% each year before taxes. I've easily doubled my money, not all due to AIM, but I attribute my not losing money to AIM factors. I did hit a jackpot with Sirius the day Howard Stern made his jump announcement, but otherwise I've been pretty much strictly AIMing -High (80% in stock 20% cash) with straight stocks, no funds and even in the down markets I've made plenty of profits.
Hope that helps,
Steve
www.undertrader.com
Over priced?
I've programmed my own AIM program with a bunch of bells and whistles that I wanted, one of which was a ratio I came up with that weeded out overpriced (based on my strategy of price, not on fundamentals at all) and I usually have quite a few stocks that are undervalued to choose from when I have extra cash lying around, but not today. Today, out of the 60 or so stocks that have been on my watch list for the past 5 years, none are coming up as a potential buy using my strategy.
Is anyone else feeling that a pull back is on it's way or even necessary? How can all of the stocks on my watch list be overpriced at the same time if not an indication that a pullback should come sometime sooner than later?
Any thoughts?
- Steve
www.undertrader.com
Google Reader.
I just added this link http://www.investorshub.com/boards/rss.asp?board_id=949
into my Google RSS reader (reader.google.com) and it doesn't display the messages properly at all in there. I think it's because the BBS you use doesn't use subjects, so it's taking the message itself and trying to ram it into the subject field and its taking peoples signatures and making them the meat of the post.
Hopefully, a way to resolve this could be found because RSS is awesome.
Thanks,
Steve
And so it begins....
The bulls are running today, the Santa feeling is in the air for investors it seems, which brings us to that fun question:
Do I take my profits now and run or do I wait for January 1st to snag profits to get 16 months of tax-free trading money?
Of course, you should always pocket money when you can, taxes aren't TOO big of an issue, however when you have stocks like Apple and the like that are up over $20 a share (at least from when I bought it just a couple months ago) that's a hefty hunk of change to let sitting, but the advantage of having 30% more of your money to invest for 16 months is pretty significant.
Just something to ponder today as we all cash in on the 'no good' stocks we all got a short time ago. :)
- Takr
Happy Thanksgiving!
I just wanted to give a big thanks to Tom, for totally helping me understand AIM on a whole new level and giving me 'Vealies' to increase those gains even more.
Grabber and Adam, thanks for explaining all of the stuff that I have stupid questions about all the time. You guys have been extremely helpful!
Don for backing up my ideas for me so I don't feel so alone in my strategies!
And to everyone else, thanks for participating. It's always enlightening to come into the forum and read about other peoples ideas and strategies and see that there are actually many stocks and many strategies that work, even in horrible markets and that with a little research and a lot of AIMing, it's pretty darn easy to make a killing in the market.
And, before I'm forget, I'm thankful for my sells in Ebay, APPLE (think I'll Vealie this one), MDY, Opsware (OPSW) and SPY today and my Buys in DECK and SUN.
Happy Thanksgiving
- Takr
I'll share my strategy with you, which has gotten me 24% returns this year and 36% returns over 5 years...
On January 1st I pick 50 companies to invest in and only 50 companies. I pick companies that have 'name monopolies.' In other words, if you think of a product, you think of that company. Think of soft drinks? You think Coke or Pepsi. You think of Computers? Apple or Microsoft. You think of Motorcycles, you get Harleys. You get the idea. I don't buy any airlines or car makers.
Then I simply use the 50-200 day moving averages of these companies as my buy indicator. If a stock is above either it's 50 or 200 day average, I never buy it. It's overpriced in my opinion. So, out of my 50 stocks, 3-5 are usually below their 50 and 200 day averages and thats when I buy them.
I like ETFs and I think they're a great investment, but in my opinion, at least at my age, diversity leads to lowered profits because you're essentially setting yourself up for forced losses. I think in 3 years I'd have 5 stocks I've dumped for losses and dozens had gains.
I also dump a stock entirely if I feel they are at the top of their ride. If I buy a Disney at $20, lets say, and it drops to $15, I use AIM to get shares, but when Disney hits $26-27 I dump it all because that's about it's high in recent memory. Time to hop on another bus that's starting out.
I also go in with the idea to make 4% per trade because that's what I'd make in CD's right now. I need to at least beat that amount.
My other two 'techniques' are that I never trade when the market is open and I usually only buy on weekends when I have 2 days to really think about my trade.
I don't look at any of the PE ratios or any of that, I don't think they matter unless you're looking to purchase a company. I think the market is a huge popularity contest and if the news says, "Sales of Hamburgers are up 200%!" everyone rushes out and buys McDonalds, whether it's McDonalds that is doing good or not, but since they have the "Name Monopoly", they will go up.
Just my strategy, but it's worked for me.
I know you asked Tom, but for me I do the full trade.
- Takr
And the truck just keeps backing in with profits....
In this, to quote MSNBC and others, 'horrible market', the Money Truck keeps stopping off at my house making deliveries. :) I guess those TV people don't know what they're talking about. But, we all knew that.
Apple, Ebay, Midcap ETF all gave me more cash and I got a couple buys for Deckers (ugg boots), Sun Micro and Chesapeake energy.
Revisiting minimum buy/sell question...
Someone made the good advice to raise my minimum trade to $1000, but I was thinking in the shower today, what if you bought 100 shares of a $10 stock (or 100 shares of any stock?)
You're waiting for a $10 gain before invoking a sale? I think some sort of scaling would have to be in place, mostly because, in my opinion, I'd rather go for X gain than X% gain because overall I think it lowers risk. (Just my opinion.)
For example, if I had 25,000 shares of something, a $1000 gain might be nice to cash out rather than waiting for a 2,500 gain. Also, sinec you're taking the safe of first, you'd be looking at an increase of $5000 before you'd trigger a sale and on a 100 share stock, a gain of $11 before a sale.
Now, I personally would never buy 100 shares of a stock because it's just not worth it to me to only gain $100 with every dollar gain in the stock, but theoretically speaking...there should be a nice scalable medium that changes based on the amount invested or the amount of shares you have since the profit scales with each.
I had started with 10%, but that's a bit of a huge jump for a more expensive stock since you're essentially setting yourself to require a 20% gain to get your sale.
Am I over thinking things? I have some positions I manage that have $100k in them and some that have $10k. I'm finding that leaving the $100k at risk based on the same principals as the $10k is a bit stressful. :)
Thanks,
- Takr
I have a ton of stock. :) But I did raise my minimum trade to $750 or $1000, so we're back on track!
My min order was set to $250, that's probably it. It's a huge amount of money in the AIM program though. I'll increase the minimum.
Thanks guys!
Steve
That's what I meant, and that's what happened, I sold shares this morning and a stock kept going up and triggered another sale today. Do you take that sale or wait a bit?