A.I.M. Users Bulletin Board

[OldAIMGuy]

Hi Marc and Welcome, Re: Starting AIM..........

Yes, it's probably a great time to get your AIM accounts started.

One way of looking at this is to assume AIM would have had you 100% invested at the bottom of the '08-'09 panic. If you were to assume that, and start your AIM portfolios at that point, you'd have started with 100% invested and zero cash reserve. Portfolio Control could be set at 20% higher than portfolio value at that time as well. If you did so, then by now those AIM portfolios would have generated significant reserves of cash. Those would be "market driven" cash reserve levels appropriate for those individual investments.

I don't know if I'm an expert, but I do have 25 years of actual AIM investing. I've stubbed my toe along the way a few times, but that has been more stock selection than management of equities. AIM has been a great manager while I was moderately successful at picking stocks. I'm sure luck had plenty to do with my stock selection.

Since switching to ETFs, it's been easier in that the funds do the selection for me. AIM and I ride their coat tails and manage the risk of ownership. Steel-Toed Boots may not be as cool as Flip Flops, but my toes don't get injured as often.

In general for ETFs (both business sector and style types) I've been using 10% total SAFE with all of it on the Buy side. I generally use 5% of shares as the minimum for selling and 6% of shares for buying. I also cap the cash reserve with a floating target from my market risk indicator.

Those are the settings. Further, I don't allow more than one buy in a 30 day period. That's to help control the cash burn rate. I've not made any significant changes to the settings or the management rule set in a long time.

Best regards,