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Strategies & Market Trends : AIM Questions and Answers -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: OldAIMGuy who wrote (51)	9/22/1998 10:53:00 AM
From: OldAIMGuy	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 221

Q....... --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Hi Tom, I'm just getting a knowledge base on A.I.M. and am paper trading now. One thing I've seen you mention that interests me is using your IRA and a A+ bull/F bear fund with A.I.M. This may sound incredibly naive, but how do I go about "managing" my IRA? Can I set up an account with a given fund and place X dollars in a money market fund to allow "easy" purchases and sales as long as I don't withdraw as per IRA rules? Also, I was wondering about the timing of A.I.M.for stocks versus mutual funds. Is it best to enter data on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis? With a high beta stock (as you recommend), wouldn't it be best to use a shorter timeline to take advantage of more moves that the stock undergoes while (one would hope), the fund would have less volatile movement so a longer time period may be more effective and time-conserving, esp. if the fund A.I.M. account is a long termer like an IRA. Just a couple thoughts on a really fascinating topic. Really like your website - it's what got me into reading the book and doing more research. Thanks. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- (Years_AIMing?) I'm new to AIM - Haven't started yet. (Preferences) AIM Information that I found (REPLY) Yes (Web_Site) http:// (Location) Brookfield, Wisconsin (How_Find) Other ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- A............... Hello Brookfield!!, It's good to have a fellow Wisconsinite drop by! Thanks for the note. There's enough of us here in WI that we should have a user's meeting some time. My IRA is with Am. Century Funds. I consolidated about 4-5 of them that I'd started in the '80s into one just to simplify my life. That was in January of 1990. I used Forbes Magazine's annual review (as suggested by Mr. Lichello) and condensed the lists of mutual funds to just a few by using the basic selection process that I've described at the web site. Ultra Fund (TWCUX) came up on top at that time. Since Am. Century has money market funds I use their service to shuffle dollars back and forth as AIM suggests. It can be done by phone with their (800) number or on-line with my computer. Many fund families allow this. Both the TWCUX account and the money market account are IRAs so there's no paperwork needed for the IRS. Orders are just internal transfers and not considered withdrawals. One unique feature of Am. Century Funds is that they let you place limit orders which are good for 90 days at a time. This means you can pre-calculate at what price you want to buy or sell $500 worth of your IRA and then place the orders immediately. The orders just sit there until the fund's NAV hits at or better than the order and then it fills. This is really a "no sweat" way to manage an account. I update my AIM accounts (I use Bob Norman's Newport Program) once per week since that's the time frame that is built into the software. I usually limit my trading to once per week on most stocks. I don't really differentiate between stocks and funds. Since AIM is a retrospective program, it's always looking at what just happened and not guessing about the future. In my case, Newport lets me see what my next buy and sell prices are to be for whatever my minimum size order is. So, I can place orders on stock on a "good until cancelled" basis and then the orders fill whenever the strike price is achieved. Some stocks would trade more frequently than once per week, but rarely do we get AIM trades of a buy and a sell all in one week. Remember that AIM asks us to make more than 20% between a buy and a sell, and not that many stocks range that much in just a week. Exceptions occur under severe market stress like we've had in the last few weeks. Some of my JBL stock that I bought at $23-7/8 just two weeks ago was sold this AM for $35-1/4. The 48% LIFO gain in just two weeks is somewhat unusual, but is symptomatic of the market's stress. AIM was kind enough to help me participate profitably. Mutual funds tend to move in longer, shallower cycles. Usually we have time to react to the changes and make our trades. The peculiar part of trading mutual funds with AIM is that we never know what the closing price for the day will be when we place our order! If we update our portfolio and it says we're supposed to sell $1000 worth of the fund at yesterday's closing price, we really don't know what price we might actually get at today's close. This isn't a big concern. AIM will take care of the minor differences internally. Just as an aside, my broker, that I use for a large part of my AIM trading, is in Brookfield. He is also an AIM/Newport user for his own account and for some of his clients. I've been with him since before I started using AIM over 10 years ago. He understands what I'm attempting to do and doesn't try to "second guess" my requests. I find this time saving, if nothing else! If you would like his phone number and name, just write back. I'm glad you found the web site of benefit and interest. AIM isn't lazy man investing, nor is it hyperactive investing like short term trading. It's in between. It's active enough to keep one's interest, but still lets us "have a life" beyond it. Please feel free to ask any questions as you move forward with AIM. Best regards, Tom