A.I.M. Users Bulletin Board

[OldAIMGuy]

Hi Lou, Re: the UBA examples from my old web site.......

There's a lot more info at that old site which will help to fill in a lot of blanks. ( http://web.archive.org/web/20120830055133id_/http://www.aim-users.com/index.html )

1) early on (around 1990) I split SAFE into two pieces, Buy and Sell. Each could then be "tuned" to the investment in question. This activity was usually after I'd done some historical viewing of the investment's activity. Most of my ETF components I use 10% Buy SAFE and zero on the sell side.

2) Another early effort was to come up with something better than a 'one size fits all' cash starting point. It was called the i-Wave. Today the AIM Users have the v-Wave as a reasonable substitute. Recently it's been showing a very high level of cash needed for starting individual company stock AIM accounts. For diversified portfolios it is currently showing about 42% as being appropriate. That's quite conservative, I believe.

3) I've not added much to my IRA in years. Not much earned income from which to do so. However, I would have been adding cash and equity value most likely at the Cash/Equity ratio that AIM showed at the time of the addition. That would be the best barometer. AIM knows when you've been buying or selling and the ratio reflects such.

Part of the overall effort has been to keep the cash level appropriate for the perceived market risk. To conserve cash, I generally don't make more than one sequential purchase in a 30 day window of time. We can run out of cash with AIM. However, we can't run out of shares if using the basic AIM method, so I'll sell as often as my position triggers a Sell Market Order.

Hope this helps.