A.I.M. Users Bulletin Board

[ljk]

I'm really back again! Missed you all, and delighted you're still around and have lots of good new things going on. I only caught up on the last several posts, but I'll try to read more from the past as time goes by.

I had some personal crisis from December till just recently and it took up all my time, but I'm really back now and it's great to see all the old faces as well as new faces.

I've been using AIM on trading failures primarily, and most of those are still in the red or at just about break even. I've been in SPY, VTI, DIA and QQQ on and off, mostly on, since March and am currently long them. Reading the past several notes, I realize I need to put those into AIM, or set Trailing Stops behind them. I guess there's no need for both. Wondering if I set Stops, what percentage to use... Because my portfolio as a whole, in which I've been doing a lot of trading, has done well, and most of the AIM stocks have had several Buys and Sells since I plunked them into AIM in November, 2002, I changed the SAFEs on most of them, up from zero to 5% on the Sells and down from as much as 20 or 25% on the Buys, to 15%. I'm still individualizing them, though.

Overall, I've been doing very well since March, so even though most of the AIM stocks still show overall losses, that's not indicative of the whole story. I've been trading reflexively, even though for the most part I believe this is a cyclical bull market of some strength, within the secular bear market of greater strength. IOW, I really should have mostly stopped trading in March and just held, because the trend has been up since then. But instead I am nervous and I sell when I have a good gain, buy back, often higher, selling for another good gain. I'm trying to discipline myself to HOLD or HOLD and put them into AIM or HOLD and put out Stops. I've done a lot of trading in the Chinese Portals: SINA, SOHU and NTES, but I've also traded many others. When I get stuck with a bad trade, I often throw the stock into Newport. That helps save my bacon. The discipline is so helpful.

Oddly, I happened to catch the action in ACG today. I concluded the exact same as Tom. I decided a Big Shot decided to sell in order to put his money into the stock market, for bigger gains, and that then scared a lot of smaller investors into selling, too. For my part, I've been doing so much better in the market than the nice dividend ACG provided, that I pulled a day trade on it, clearing an excellent profit, deciding not to hold ACG longer term. Interest rates shouldn't be going up that soon or that quickly, for people to feel the price of ACG would go down, IMO. I just think they didn't want to stay away from the stock market rally. I can't imagine that there could be actual bad news that could influence the price of ACG so severely in such a dramatic way. But watch! There'll be some awful news tonight, proving me wrong. :)

Wondering if Rien has something for me and my Macintosh yet???

Linda