Hi Tim, You said I've been wondering about a sensible way to manage my 403b port. It's tax-deferred, and gets automatic contributions.
I think that you should have the contributions go to ether a MM fund or a short term bond fund initially. Then when you see how your funds have behaved, you can pull cash from there, to place in your other funds. Being that you are interested in AIM you may want to check out other Formula plans to. I have a message board here, http://www.investorshub.com/boards/board.asp?board_id=966 where I try to find what is good and bad about each one. In the header you will find shortcuts to the main messages describing each one, also at the bottom there is a link to some spreadsheets.
As you were talking about testing, I think I should introduce you to Gummy's web site, Gummy is a retired Math teacher, that maybe the reason there is so much math on his site. He has a lot of spreadsheets that you can get. http://www.home.golden.net/~pjponzo/gummy_stuff.htm Be sure to take two Tylenol, before going there!
Hi Tim, I see you have at least one business sector fund - the precious metals VGPMX. I would like to suggest that these sector funds may offer good diversity for the sector and greater volatility to drive the AIM engine. Take a look at VGENX to add a specific Energy component, for instance. I'm sure there's more business sector funds available.
As a caution, business sector funds are going to probably require a larger cash reserve on hand than more broadly diversified funds. This has to do with the Wall St. syndrome of Sector Rotation. Wall St.'s Love/Hate relationship with sectors tends to drive each one to the extremes necessary to get AIM activity.
Of the funds you've listed, most are probably only going to require AIM activity maybe once or twice a quarter with standard AIM settings. This is a very nice low key way to handle things.
I get the impression that you can trade each stock (fund) at most 12 times a year. That is fine for AIMing. You would check each stock once a month to see what AIM signals. Depending on the volitility of the stock you will trade a lot less often than that (which is fine).
Trading only once a month on a set date gives AIM time to get you a BETTER price than at your min buy or sell signal.
You need to pick a starting PORTFOLIO CONTROL value: 1)current value 2)your cost (ave cost * #shares) 3)other????
I get the impression you have very little cash in the account. If that is the case I would put all future contributions in to a MM fund till it is the size of the total CASH reserve required for all your stocks. Once it is that big the value can float up and down as your stocks require funds. If you have a large account this may take awhile. AS we are hopefully at the bottom of the market hopfully AIM will not require you to invest gobs of new funds (which you do not have) right off and you will have sales instead that will build up your cash reserve innitially.
Once your cash reserves gets to be where they are supposed to be (30-50%??)the new money you put in to the retirement account can then be used to start new AIM programs. TWINVEST and SYNCROVEST are good for an account where new money is added regularly.
Toofuzzy
Take the road less traveled. It will make all the difference.
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