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Strategies & Market Trends : A.I.M Users Group Bulletin Board -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: B. J. Barron who wrote (7566)	5/30/1999 9:12:00 PM
From: Dataminer1	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 18928

Hi BJ, I noticed you said you set the minimum trade at $1000, which is fine, but set the minimum number of shares to 100. That's probably why your range is so large. You should probably reduce your minimum shares to trade. that will help narrow the range to something more realistic. Good Luck. Hope this helps. Bill

To: B. J. Barron who wrote (7566)	5/30/1999 10:06:00 PM
From: RFH	Respond to of 18928

In addition to what Bill said, I would play with the buy and sell safe numbers. In Newport, you can do this with the "what if" button, and start by changing either the buy or sell resistance numbers (or both) to 5%. The range will narrow accordingly. Let us know what you decide on, OK? Sincerely, RFH

To: B. J. Barron who wrote (7566)	5/31/1999 9:53:00 AM
From: Bernie Goldberg	Respond to of 18928

Hi B.J., You will get messages from folks about how to change AIM. I would respectfully recommend to you that at least at the outset you ignore them. It is amazing to me how people can read a "how to" book and come away with the idea that it is amazing and should really work. Then they go about changing just about everything that they read. #1 Read Mr. Lichello's book and decide if AIM is the way you want to go. #DH is a very good company. I ran a PCA chart for DH over the the last three years. Some of the good folks on this thread would have you believe that it is not a good AIM candidate. Here is the data. You would have started May 30 1996 with 1900 shares at 16.44 ($31236) With a stock the quality of DH you could easily have started with 33% Cash reserve ($15618) Today you would have a profit of $56792. Your cash reserve would have grown to $65572 and your Stock would have grown in value to $39417. You would only have 586 shares left at a cost basis of negative $29.98. This does not include the dividends or the interest you would have received on your cash reserve. If you had bought and held you would have a profit of $101,538 with no cash reserve. The difference between the two methods is roughly 75%. This does not mean AIM doesn't work. One could only say that if one was convinced that the Stock Market including DH was NEVER going to decline by more than 20%. I would say that DH would be an excellent core holding in your portfolio. You don't need 48% cash with a steady growing, dividend paying stock, 33% will do just fine. That will leave you about $15000 to start another AIM program with something a little bit spicier. One could consider that as a bonus from AIM. Set your minimum transaction at 5% of your total stock value ($1500) as recommended by Mr. Lichello. Do your updating weekly with Newport but only do your buying and selling biweekly or monthly. ARBML (as recommended by Mr. Lichello) Leave your safes at 10% (ARBML) Just remember AIM is a low risk method of investing. That is what makes it work. You can change the cash when you start your investment to any amount you want in the setup screen. I hope this helps. Bernie P.S. AIM works! That is what impressed you in the first place.

To: B. J. Barron who wrote (7566)	5/31/1999 9:42:00 PM
From: OldAIMGuy	Respond to of 18928

Hi BJ and Welcome!, As the folks have already told you, you can fine tune AIM and Newport to suit the personality of the individual issue in question. The problem is HOW do you do that when you're just getting started. Please note that in Newport, it looks at the LARGER of the two minimums - either shares or dollars and then calculates the HOLD ZONE (where no trades take place) from that larger figure. In your case, you set the trade minimum in dollars nicely low ($1000) but put in a huge minimum in the form of shares. The reason this affects the trade range so much is that you are telling AIM you don't want to trade unless you are selling off or buying an additional 20% of your current total number of shares. Mr. L suggests using 5% of the total equity value as a minimum for trading. Converting that to shares will then give you what you should set the minimums at there as well. It would be about $1500 in dollars or about 25 shares minimum. Using a discount brokerage should still give you very efficient trades even if you use a 25 share minimum. This will bring the HOLD ZONE down to a much more reasonable size. When adding a new stock of fund to Newport, you use the ADD A STOCK feature from the main menu. It prompts you for the number of shares, the amount of cash reserve (it defaults to 33%, but you can put the figure at any value you desire) and the Buy & Sell Resistance values (SAFE). Hope this helps a bit as you get started. Remember that AIM isn't nearly as active a management method as most "trading" systems. It only asks you to do something when something needs to be done! This allows us lots of free time to care for other areas of our lives and to be free of "ticker addiction!!" Please feel free to ask away. There's always someone here that will help out. Best regards, Tom