A.I.M. Users Bulletin Board

[SFSecurity]

Hi Gang,

Thanks for your responses. They are most helpful.

I'm not totally clueless but I find it is better to not overrate my knowledge and skills. Given this I'm going to use the traditional method and do it on paper for a bit. I understand the steps (but he buried them in a bunch of verbiage) and can do a short paper trading familiarization run to confirm my understanding.

I need to get this in place sooner rather than later so my questions now boil down to these:

1) Would a paper trade on a daily basis for a month mimic a monthly close enough that this would suffice or should I do it for (x) months instead?

2) From the responses it seems that using the Vanguard approach for low cost makes the most sense, at least at first. Given the virtues of ETFs in avoiding the "single stock" risk which ones are a good place to start?

3) Does anyone besides myself think that we are nearing (6-12 months) a market peak? The reason I ask this is that if we are headed for a down slope it would seem to me to be wise to stay mostly in cash until some small signs of a turn around are seen. On the other hand what is the general feeling about trading on what is left of the current upswing?

4) Given that AIM (in its various forms and variations) is dependent on market volatility to generate a significant portion of its returns would it be a good idea to do mostly ETFs but add one or two stocks to grab some of their volatility? For example APPL is not likely to go out of business anytime soon but there a reasonable amount of volatility that would allow for profit capture. Does this make sense?

5) Should I start with just one ETF or several? I have the needed ready money to start 3 ($60k) with no problem and if I sold a few dogs (1-2% losses) I could do another 2 for one trust. The other has less ready cash so it seems to me that I should concentrate on the first to start with and gain the experience of reality there first. Does this make sense?

Thanks a whole bunch!

Allen