Greetings Old John,
The virtual machine is set up with the same values as Lichello uses, see page 56 in the fourth edition. Safe is 10%, no minimum buy or sell. The size of the virtual machine is your choice. The virtual machine develops from ZERO-AIM to LD-AIM to Classic-Full-AIM.
I try to have all stock-machines of roughly similar size. If you anticipate a drawdown of 50%, then you need cash for that drawdown similar to the average machine size. Let Lichello invest the cash and when you do the final conversion to Classic-Full-AIM you can spend all cash that was still left.
An important criterium for me is that I should feel happy with this process, happiness tuned by Lichello's philosophy. Whenever I used termvest or synchrovest and did a buy on a somewhat higher level, I did not feel happy, and needed a few days to shed that feeling. If you are doing what is right(buy low), you feel happy immediately.
Your series of planned purchases is another possibility to do the buying. Always also look at the virtual machine buy advice, make sure that your real purchases are not above Lichello's buy advice. To spread your real buys, look at transaction costs to determine your optimal buying sequence.
I don't think you are overly cautious, I think you are prudent especially in the current climate. Just a few minutes ago I saw that september inflation is over 17% here.
Hope I have answered your question a bit.
Best, K
