Replies to post #32730 on A.I.M. Users Bulletin Board (AIMUSERS)

[ls7550]

Hi Clacy

I think AIM Macro was proposed by Don Carlson and I believe it stands for Moving Average Crossover i.e it only reviews/makes AIM trades whenever the daily price crosses from above to below, or below to above a moving average.

I can't recall the exact choice, but think it was something like a 219 day moving average.

The concept being that you run up (or down) further before making AIM trades across a large low to high or high to low price swing.

Best. Clive.

[Toofuzzy]

Hi clancy

Before you get confused by any "improvements" to AIM try and understand and use standard AIM. All the other stuff will just confuse you. While some little tweek "MAY " improve returns, many times it does so with increased risk and trust me that they were all proposed at a time that they worked. Which means that they may not work as well in the future.

We all talk about AIM and changes on this board because we are board as hell since AIMing only takes 15 minutes / month.

If you want to "TRY" and make 300% / month go to the Motley Fool Mechanical Investing board, and if you think AIMing is complicated good luck over there trying to figure out which of their 50 screens is "best"

And before you ask about which computer program is best to AIM with, I still use paper and pencil though I did put a small program on Tom's www,aim-users.com board to figure out the "HOLD ZONE" so I just write that down on an index card and I only have to do the calculations if a security goes outside that zone.

I reccomend:

1) Save as much as possible
2) decide on your asset allocation
3) You can diversify in to your asset allocation over time. So instead of having a bunch of small accounts , you can buy a large cap fund one year and two years later buy a small cap fund and then a foreign stock fund and then a REIT and then a bond fund and then? So it may take you 5 or ten years to start and AIM account in everything you want to own
4) I have found the minimum STOCK account size to start with is $10,000 and between $5,000 and $10,000 in cash depending where the market cycle is. So you need between $15,000 and $20,000 / AIM account. This is so the trades you make don't get ridiculously small.
5) Do as much of your trading as possible in a retirement preferably a ROTH IRA. Less record keeping for the IRS
6) Please keep records for your tax preparer! (my pet peeve)

Other people here will have other thoughts but I like to keep things simple.

Toofuzzy

[Conrad]

Hi Clacy,

Some years ago I posted this on a "Stop & Wait" Filter, of which Don Carson's MACRO is an example:

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=1979676

When Don Carlson developed his filter he asked me to do some testing on it and after that I coined the name MACRO for him.
I do not have any contact information for Don anymore.

At that time years ago Don developed an AIM variant that was identical to Vortex AIM.

[AIMster]

ello everyone. Fairly new to board and still getting my arms around Aim.

Welcome!

Toofuzzy's given you a good reply to start with. I want to add the suggestion that you go to Yahoo finance, for example, pick a stock or fund you might be interested in, then download the historical prices. Those will come in a .csv file, most recent to oldest. Reverse the sort, then do a spreadsheet that will let you work through the AIM calculations. You can start with Lichello's 13 column layout and work from there. By working through a few of these you'll get a better sense of how AIM works, rather than just looking at the seemingly endless tables in the book. At the end of your data, you can then compare how buy-and-hold would have compared to AIM.

The thing to understand about AIM (with or without any "enhancements") is that is serves as a volatility capture mechanism. What this means in plain English is that you sell into a price rise, then have the cash to buy more later should the price fall. Of course, starting with some cash reserve initially is usually prudent in case the stock or fund starts to fall initially, rather than rising in price.

To give an example, Hecla Mining (HL) renders a chart:



You'll note the red line following the prices, each marking a 30% retrace, which is the "default" AIM value. This is the sort of pattern that AIM likes, though I wouldn't bet the farm on this one particular stock, just found one with a good pattern for illustrative purposes.

Anyway, hope this adds to your understanding of AIM - DO feel free to ask more questions, we're a very helpful bunch around here!!

Best,

AIMster