A.I.M. Users Bulletin Board

[SFSecurity]

Hi cklow, If you like I'll review what you have. Send it to: [e-mail]

A point to remember is that AIM depends on volatility and if there is not enough and in a specific time period B&H could very well do better.

I just ran the dates that Toofuzzy suggested (1/2000 - 1/2013) for SPY and it does beat B&H and if you go to 12/2013 AIM beats the pants off of B&H with a ~64% gain versus ~32% B%H. This is using $20,000 position, 50% cash for AIM and a minimum sale of $1000 and 30% starting shares for buy/sell and 0% sell safe. Yeah, I know that the minimum share sell at 30% is way above the 5-10% that most refer to and in the book but if you use that you get ~3% less return for the period.

They both beat the S&P 500 over the 1/2000 - 12/2013 frame. AIM is 3.66%/year over the 13.917 years while B%H is 2.03% and the S&P 500 was 1.74%/year, starting at $1454.60 on 1/3/2000 and ending at $1848.46 on 12/2/2013.

If you go back to 1/2000 to 1/2013 then AIM beats the pant off of both B&H and the S&P 500 itself with ~44% over the 13 years. B&H is only 7.26% and the S&P 500 itself is 7.43% over the same time period. These translate into 2.85%/year for AIM, 0.54% for B&H and 0.55% for the S&P 500 itself.

AIM just beats inflation for the period which was somewhere between 2.35%/year and 2.42%/year, depending on the online calculator you use.

What all this goes to show is that backtesting is not always a reliable way of evaluating what position to get into for the long term.

Best,

Allen