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.
Thanks for the great template! Some recommend for SAFE to use a different percentage from the 10% for both buy and sell, like 8% for sell and 0% for buy. How do I change this in the template?
unable to open the spreadsheet. Any reason why.
Hi Mike …thanks for your share. Been looking for my copy of the book so I could recreate the spreadsheet that I have lost. You saved me much work …thanks again.
Not sure if the professor would use this on crypto but going to give it a try. Been selling off profit to reinvest in next crash but thought his approach would be more effective. If so will get back to you.
Jeff
I am trying to set up AIM Google Sheets for a portfolio using your spreadsheet for single equity. Would you have any suggestions or even better a Google Sheet set up for that? I suppose we have a worksheet for each equity and then a system that shares the cash between all worksheets. I would be grateful for your help. Thanks.
Enrico – My apologies, but I don’t have any experience with Google Sheets. I used to have a “dashboard” page on my spreadsheet, but found that was a pain to keep updated (and I’m not a spreadsheet wizard, unfortunately).
Hey Mike, thanks for putting this together! Is there a way to adjust the ratio to the AIM-HI formula (80 invest/20 cash)?
Dell – I think the easiest way would just be to take your total $$, buy stock with 80% of it and put that into the price & shares held cells of the first line, and then put the balance (20%) in the initial cash value position. My caution here would be that 20% will likely NOT be enough of a reserve if you’re buying into a highly volatile stock (let’s take NVAX as a handy example). If you don’t happen to time your entry at/near the bottom of a major upswing, your reserve will be eaten up in no time. However, if you’re going after something like AAPL, SPY, QQQ, etc., I’d still try to time your entry when the stock is oversold, but it’s less likely you’d bottom out on the 20% unless there was a major bear market.
Thanks so much for your reply!
Mr. Hicks what happened to all the ten thousand system that the Kreylan left behind when moving to their next step of their evolution. I remember Reza said that they would see his
French friend in 50000 thousand years after he gave her the genoth eye stone. there this should be enough to get your muse a jump start.
Thank you, Roberto! I wish that WOULD be enough to get my muse started, but she’s still off on her endless vacation. But in answer to your questions, I really don’t know what happens after the end of Final Battle – that remains shrouded in mystery!
I think humans should start to move on to those system as spoils of war to cover the resources to spend on the fighting and compete with the others for supremacy and power to discover aliens who had escaped the Kreylans are reappearing to also claim those system as their own(genoth eye as a communication device) and they are powerful indeed those aliens as old as the kreylans and seeing the builders are not fighters not all of them chose to leave with the others kreylans as of yet those are the ones that can build ships the magic kreylan way and they are beseiged by ancient enemies seeking revenge and they could not leave with the other kreylans…..
Hey Michael, how do I add shares to the sheet if I bought more shares without the signal. I just bought more because the price is low, but I did not have the signal.
Gary – You just enter the bought price in the share price column, then the number of shares you bought in the shares bot (sold) column. The spreadsheet will automatically update things for the next row. Note: remember that if you’re talking about the last row in the sheet, you need to FIRST copy and paste it into the next row to be ready for the next trade.
Hi, how can I adjust the spreadsheet to work with cryptocurrencies, considering that for example, one BitCoin is subdivided in 1/10,000,000 units?…
I’m having a bit of trouble figuring out the P/L%. For example, if I use your template and enter a purchase of $11 on the second line, it gives a P/L% of 10%. If I enter another with $12 on the third line, it gives a P/L% of 20%. The formula seems to only refer to the CASH, and not the CASH plus original stock purchase value. Am I missing something?
Michael, should I ever get a Sell order when price goes down? That”s what I got on the second day on 3 out of 4 templates as of the close yesterday (8/22/22). So a sell on a lower price doesn’t seem to lead to buying low and selling high. It seems very contrary, so without further understanding of this conundrum, I really can’t trust the AIM template right now.
Please advise.
Thanks!
I figured it out. I had to adjust my Cash Value and Portfolio Control formulas to conform to the formulas in the “Template – Copy Sheet” control worksheet. Now everything seems to be okay.
Michael I thought 5% from what i’ve read was the trigger percentage for a buy/sell order using Roberts AIM method. On The spreadsheet first row I entered an initial purchase price of $8.17 on 100 shares of a stock. The price dropped to $7.75 a 5.1% decrease and no buy order was given. so i got curious i entered numbers until i got a buy order it came at buy 6 at $7.05 thats a 13.7% drop it takes that much to trigger a buy ??
THANKS great help
wow I just found this, I have tried to come up with a spreadsheet for a long time now. This works great. I remember when this book came out back in the 70’s. I have a request, I know this woks best in a moving market, Could you adapt this sheet to work with bitcoin or any other crypto coin for that matter. I have tried to change setting but I do not have the skill for this task. lol thank you in advance