A.I.M. Users Bulletin Board

[OldAIMGuy]

Hi i5001, Re: Ultra from Am. Century vs the "other" Ultra funds.............

American Century's Ultra Fund is a well diversified, low cost, no load mutual fund run by a committee. It's not an "index fund" or a leveraged index fund. The ones to which Toof if referring are the latter.

I owned Am. Century Ultra from around 1990 to around 2002. It worked well enough and provided me with reasonable gains. After 2000 it also, had I been collecting dividends in CASH, provided me with an opportunity to use AIM's buy side to accumulate more shares. Unfortunately, I'd always let Am. Century do the reinvesting of dividends. That left me short of cash when the account needed it desperately.

After Sept, 2002 I redeployed the $$$ into separate business sector ETFs so that AIM could work each component rather than the diversified blend of Ultra Fund. That worked better.

Much is going to depend upon the total amount with which you can invest. If it's $10,000, then a single diversified mutual fund is probably fine. If it's $100,000 in value, then you might want to look at dividing it up in a similar fashion to my IRA ( http://www.aim-users.com/etfunds.htm ). If it's at $900,000, then you can subdivide it even further by using business sector ETFs for at least the U.S. portion.

If the individual AIM accounts are too small, then your minimum order size will make the Hold Zone too large. So, think of Mr. Lichello's original $10,000 as the minimum "critical mass" for making an account work. One can start an account with smaller amounts and it will work, but the trading will be minimal and therefore AIM's added benefit will be small.

Best regards, Tom