Hi SF
First of all with Aim it doesnt matter if something does well, just that it goes up and down, and of course does not go out of business. Funds are best for that last one.
It also doesnt matter how a fund performs with Aim over just a few years, especially in reguard to how much cash to start with. What matters is multiple market cycle performance. What was the drawdown in 2002 and 2009 ? From 2000 to 2013 buy and hold would have just broke even with SPY but AIMing it you would have done very well.
It doesnt matter how many funds there are or which is the "best". You want to decide what you want to own in advance.
So you want to own LARGE CAP but that is conveniently broken down into sectors that do not overlap to give you more volatility. You can then leave out the less volatile sectors or just decide which ones you like better. Them you might want to own SMALL CAP, FOREIGN, and REITS. Beyond that you may want to divide FOREIGN into seperate countries. Then you need to decide what to do with fixed income. Lastly there is GOLD, SILVER, COPPER, OIL, TIMBER.
Another choice is leveraged funds or not.
THEN lastly you need to choose a fund family, which of the 5 medical sector funds do you want from I Shares, Vanguard, Fidelity, etc. If you go the leveraged route you will different choices.
You can lay this out on a graph with the sectors you want to own in a list on the left and the fund families across the top.
Once you decide what you want to own you can invest in them one at a time as you have funds.
To make this a more general answer, someone just starting out could by a TOTAL MARKET FUND but over the years split that into SMALL and LARGE CAP, and then later split the large cap into SECTOR FUNDS.
Toofuzzy
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