For those who may be interested, I’ve put a spreadsheet together to track your trades for the Robert Lichello Automatic Investment Management (AIM) system. I’ve added a few bells and whistles to it, but the underlying math is right from Lichello’s original AIM system.
So, here’s the link to my AIM Spreadsheet Template as of 7 March 2021. Remember – USE AT YOUR OWN RISK!
Here are instructions on how to use it, and I’ll be adding a YouTube tutorial soon to step you through the process:
- COPY the template sheet to create a new sheet for each stock you takes position in. Then change the title of the sheet and the header row to the stock symbol (e.g. AAPL for Apple).
- Row 1 is your entry row. Fill out ONLY the cells marked in yellow:
- Date (when you purchased the stock)
- Stock Price (the price per share you paid);
- Shares Held (number of shares that you bought);
- Stock Value (this will auto-calculated from Shares Held * Stock Price, but just in case you need to make a manual entry)
- DO NOT change the other cells
- Row 2 is your first buy/sell row. These are the ONLY cells you should update on this and all subsequent rows:
- Date
- Stock Price
- Actual Shares Bot (“Bot” = bought or sold)
- IMPORTANT: for a sell, make sure you put a MINUS (“-“) sign in front of the number for Actual Shares Bot; for a buy, just the (positive) number.
- BEFORE you enter the buy/sell information in the third row, duplicate (copy/paste) the entire row into Row 4. That keeps all the formulas intact for later transactions. Then enter your transaction information for Row 3.
- Repeat that copy/paste action for each new transaction row.
- If you find you accidentally messed up a row(s), you can always go back and copy Row 3 from the template to fix any rows from 3 on. Note that Rows 1 and 2 have different formulas in some of the cells – don’t use either of those to repair any later rows.
Found your site and this article after watching your Youtube video.
Great content and a most excellent job on the spreadsheet and thank you so much for sharing your work with the world!
Can’t wait to learn from you on this and other investing/trading related topics, thanks!
Thanks, Edward! I hope to have more videos up soon – things just got in the way this week, lol!
Thanks . Can I get aim on low cost stocks?
Yes – the cost of the stock shares is important only in that you need to buy enough to be able to buy and sell shares easily. Ideally, you want a minimum of 50 shares, but more is better.
Think or swim and tasty do not accept italians. Any other please?
I don’t know – can only recommend a Google search…
Hi Michael,
Thanks for your spreadsheet.
Can you tweak spreadsheet to handle fractional shares?
Thanx
Cheers
Garron
Hi Michael I am going to re-read your “IN HER NAME” series and I am hoping the last book will be finished by the time I get there (around September 2021). Much more exciting than spreadsheets, are you retraining to be an accountant?
Sorry, Sue! I’ve been “into” the market for a long time, and with my muse on extended vacation I just decided to post something, anything, that would get my fingers going. I know it’s been a long wait, and I wish I had a good answer for you on when it’ll be done. But I don’t want to just slap together the rest of the story… 😢😢😢
Hello Michael, I just finished the book and appreciated the simplicity of the approach. I also appreciate the work that you have done putting together a spreadsheet with the formulas. I was wondering about working with an existing portfolio. Over the years, I have built a portfolio with several index funds and VTI as the backbone. Would the purchase price be the original price and shares or should the slate be clean using only current price and shares?
I was reading it on a road trip with another employee. Reading through the gold/soap chapter, I laughed several times and had a explain what was so funny. It is clear that Robert Lichello added several anecdotes for his amusement.
Hi, Josh! I would consider setting up an AIM calculator (sheet) for each of your tickers. Then I think I’d use the average purchase price (assuming you’ve bought/sold some shares over time) for your opening price and current number of shares, then set up your buys/sells from there. And yeah, Lichello clearly added in some bits for entertainment, but even those added some great insights! 😎
Hi, One question. What does Portfolio Value represent? It starts 2x the actual value of the stock. Thank you
Mike – the Portfolio Value is just the total value of purchased stock + cash. The default for AIM is half stock + half cash.