Hi Ken,
I started investing shortly after college in the early '70s. It couldn't have been a worse time to have been putting money into the markets. Every dollar I put in instantly seem to fall to $0.80! That continued thru around 1975. Then things started to perk up.
I couldn't figure out what I was doing wrong. Heck, I was using everything I'd learned in my college investing class and nothing was working. It wasn't me, it wasn't the companies I chose, it was the MARKETS! I was too inexperienced to understand it at the time. Every time I invested back then and the price/share would immediately go down, I'd say to myself, "If I only had some extra cash I'd buy more of XYZ" - what ever the company was.
I started to listen to myself in the late '70s and early '80s and started sidelining some cash each time I bought some new stock. If it dipped, I added. It started to work. In 1986 a friend told me about an article called "The Ever Liquid Portfolio" and sent me a copy. It was in there that I saw reference to Mr. Lichello's book. After reading about AIM it felt like a warm pat on the back. Here was Mr. Lichello recommending exactly what I had stared doing. His method was far more robust than my 'seat of the pants' efforts and by January of 1988 I'd adopted AIM completely.
At the time we were a family of four with very young kids. The recovery of the stocks I'd bought in the '70s was enough to jump start AIM and keep it moving. October 19, 1987 almost derailed the whole mess, but Cash and AIM saw me through. Several times over the years we had to have some family meetings about cost control and vacations and things when market were stormy. Like in that quote, I just plain got lucky for the most part. AIM gave me the strategy and structure to stick with very long term investments to see the fruition be realized. Along the way there were always MAALOX Moments but also some very productive times as well.
With only a slightly different, less fortunate turn of luck, I would have probably given up. What started as a hobby became my vocation, however.
Thanks for bringing all of this up.
Best wishes,
OAG Tom |
