A.I.M. Users Bulletin Board

[ls7550]

Hi Adam

My thinking about the AIM buying and selling has been influenced by Don Carlson's ladder method, where he would buy a number of shares and when the stock went up he would sell the same number of shares, so in dollar value the sales were bigger than buys.

If you run a single AIM against a portfolio of stocks just letting it run as-is and using it as a guide of what percentage of stock value to add/reduce helps keep things simple. The actual portfolio value might increase/reduce with additions/withdrawals, but just leave AIM simple/as-is, and whenever it indicates a buy or sell calculate the % of stock value that represents and add/reduce the same/similar % stock value to/from your actual holdings - to equal overall effect.

AIM'ing a portfolio of stocks where AIM indicates when and how much (% of stock value) to add/reduce leaves you free to decide which individual stock holding(s) to add/reduce. Which often may not be the same holding(s) that primarily drove the AIM trade action.

Running individual AIM's and all of the cash flows into/out of them (dividends/withdrawals/rebalancing (moving) funds between holdings (AIM's) ...etc.) could result in you becoming too focused on the mechanics rather than the broader picture. But as ever, its whatever one is most comfortable with that usually works best.

Clive.