For a fast and responsive Live CD or installation try Arch Linux-based CachyOS. I tried the Desktop version of the Install/LiveCD ISO.
The ISO's grub2 menu also has a MemTest86+ v7.2 option...
The performance of global ETFs (e.g. SWDA) and S&P 500 ETFs (e.g. CSP1) so far this year has been disappointing to say the least!
It seems that bonds are not as safe as we thought either. However, it does appear that rare and precious metals are doing quite well. Two ETFs that have caught me attention are:
Both of these have shown 17% and 26% gains in just the last month:
In the last month, the Bitcoin-oriented share ALTBG (Euro) has gained over 200% to date (11:00 BST 21-May-2025). They went up 168% in the last week!
I received this email yesterday from M&S about the 'cyber incident' they suffered recently (although it seems they knew since Feb.2025!).
It says that criminals have obtained my 'contact details, date of birth and online order history' and goes on to assure me that no usable card or payment details or passwords were obtained.
E2B, agFM and Ventoy allow you to use an unattend XML file with your Microsoft Window 10/11 ISO. This allows you to specify settings and components for your Windows install as well as semi- or fully-automate the install.
Previously, I have recommended the online Windows Answer File Generator (WAFG) but the site seems to no longer exist...
Here is how to get the KRD2025 ISO to legacy boot on E2B with user file persistence and with update file persistence.
1. Download the krd.iso file and save it to \_ISO\LINUX folder as KRD2025.iso.
2. Download the Ventoy pre-made 'backend' persistence files contained within the images.zip and extract ONE of the following persistence files as a .dat file using 7zip. I tried the 2gb one.
It is possible to buy an ETN such as £3STP or €3STE which shorts TESLA shares.
The GraniteShares 3x Short Tesla Daily ETP seeks to track the Solactive Daily Leveraged 3x Short Tesla (-3x) index. The Solactive Daily Leveraged 3x Short Tesla (-3x) index tracks the three times leveraged inverse performance of the Tesla share on a daily basis.
The ETN's TER (total expense ratio) amounts to 0.99% p.a.. The ETN replicates the performance of the underlying index synthetically with a swap. The dividends in the ETN are accumulated and reinvested in the ETF.
The GraniteShares 3x Short Tesla Daily ETP is a small ETN with 18m GBP assets under management. The ETN was launched on 29 June 2020 and is domiciled in Ireland.
GraniteShares 3x short TESLA (Ticker 3STE) is an ETN that shorts TESLA by a negative factor of x3.
As long as I have some spare cash, then using a 'short' or 'inverse' fund allows me to hedge my portfolio but without selling any shares in my portfolio.
If you use Trading 212, use the Search page and look for 'Inverse ETFs' in the sidebar under the 'ETFs' heading.
Investors have secretly been moving away from S&P 500 stocks to Euro stocks. The past, excellent performance of the S&P 500 was mainly dependent on Tech stocks and due to recent events in AI and Elon Musk and his buddy DJT, etc. investors now think that Euro stocks have been undervalued in recent years.
Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens
Bright copper kettles and warm woolen mittens
Brown paper packages tied up with strings
These are a few of my favorite
things[ETFs]
I do use a small part of my investment portfolio to buy individual company stocks like NVidia or Amazon or Tower Resources (big fail!), but as I am no expert in company analysis, I tend to only break even with these at the best of times! The problem is always when one stock dives significantly - I have learnt that slow and steady is better than risking any significant loss in just one stock as it takes ages to recover from that loss.
Index ETFs on the other hand will never go down to zero and usually tend to go up or at least keep pace with inflation.
The only exception is if I (stupidly) buy a very risky stock. In this case, I will buy it inside my GIA account so that if I make a loss, I can deduct that loss from my total gains and thus pay less CGT. If it makes a large gain, then I don't mind paying the CGT! On the other hand, if I held it inside my ISA and I lost 90% of it, I cannot even make use of that loss and it will take months to get that money back from my other investments. Trading outside of an ISA does sometimes have an advantage in that you can deduct that loss from your gains.
The ETFs I have listed below are my current favourites.
My ratio of holdings in these however will vary depending on the current stock market climate.
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| My favourite ETFs, ordered by fund size. |
The recent news that the latest open source release on GitHub of Chinese-based DeepSeek (equiv. to ChatGPT, OpenAI, etc.) is supposedly 95% cheaper than current US solutions using high-end nVidia chips.
Others are saying it gives a x30 performance improvement, taking much less time to teach it and less power to run it.
The stock market (S&P, Tech) is panicking as there certainly does seem to be some truth to the claims.
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| S&P 500 (2025-01-27) |
I have a General Investment account with Interactive Investor, but I found it very painful to calculate my UK Capital Gains Tax liability on my Stocks and Shares sales.
Then someone on the ii forum suggested I try www.cgtcalculator.com and it seems to be pretty good. It seems to understand the same day rule, Section 104 rule and the 30-day rule.
If you don't know what the 30-day rule (bed-and-breakfast rule) is, then watch this video (see example 1) and here. Note selling shares of ABC on Trading 212 for instance, but then buying ABC a few days later on Interactive Investor also counts in the 30-day rule (AFAIK)!
If you have several GIA accounts, you should combine all trades into one table (CSV, XLSX, etc.) first, before calculating gains/losses and CGT.
So here are my simple steps to calculate gains/losses for CGT purposes. I also include a Trading 212 example.
Use a PC/Notebook and the browser.
I am often asked by family and friends what they should invest in. This is an extremely difficult question because I don't want to be disowned by them if they lose their money!
Stock and Shares investment is a long term commitment.
They can go up-diddly-up-up or down-diddly-down-down!
Be prepared - in some years your investment pot may decrease a lot in value but don't sell!
If you can't stand to see your portfolio lose 20% in a year, then you could choose a nice safe savings account instead! However, savings accounts barely keep up with inflation. If you are a high rate tax payer and put £100K into a savings account paying 5%, then in the UK each year you will pay 40% of that 5K interest to the tax man! If cashing out after 5 years, due to loss of compounding and the tax difference, you will be about £5K better off with a 5% gain ETF even if in a taxable S&S account, than in a 5% savings account.
When investing in Stocks and Shares we must consider:
ETFs like VOO (Vanguard S&P 500 ETF) and SCHD (Schwab U.S. Dividend Equity ETF) are not available on UK broker platforms such as Trading 212, Interactive Investor, etc.
You may have seen YouTube videos which recommend these ETFs.
Here are some equivalents which are usually available to UK and non-USA citizens.
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The FTSE 100 index stands just 15% higher than its level of 31 December 1999, representing a compound annual gain of barely 0.5% per annum.
UK investors, insurance companies and pension companies have started to see the light and are leaving UK stocks for the shinier US market. A few UK companies are even starting to de-list from the FTSE and move over to the New York/NASDAQ stock exchanges.
However, if you discount the USA's 'Magnificent Seven', the UK has still performed quite well. Good UK companies are well diversified and pay good dividends. The UK also has some solid top performers as shown below (gains in 1 year):
Many people like to have a core+satellite approach with their portfolio.
A popular choice for a core ETF is either:
Amazon does not feature much in high-performance Tech and Comms ETFs such as IITU or IUCM and comprises only 5% within the Nasdaq EQQQ ETF.
Some Consumer Discretionary ETFs hold a large proportion of Amazon (30%) and also Tesla (15%) such as XUCD (or XSCD for GBP). If you think Amazon and Tesla will do well next year when Trump takes over, this may continue to show good gains. I think Amazon will continue to show good performance next year although import tariffs and tightening advertising regulations in the EU and UK may adversely affect the Amazon online retail business.
Note: The ETF IUCD is very similar to XUCD and is available on Trading 212.
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| Consumer Discretionary (blue) has shown good gains recently, mainly due to Tesla (and Amazon). |
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| Tech and Financials should both show good performance. |
The VanEck Crypto and Blockchain Innovators UCITS ETF seeks to track the MVIS Global Digital Assets Equity index. The MVIS Global Digital Assets Equity index tracks companies from around the world that are active in the blockchain industry.The ETF's TER (total expense ratio) amounts to 0.65% p.a.. The VanEck Crypto and Blockchain Innovators UCITS ETF is the only ETF that tracks the MVIS Global Digital Assets Equity index. The ETF replicates the performance of the underlying index by full replication (buying all the index constituents). The dividends in the ETF are accumulated and reinvested in the ETF.The VanEck Crypto and Blockchain Innovators UCITS ETF has 233m GBP assets under management. The ETF was launched on 30 April 2021 and is domiciled in Ireland.
I have added a few ETFs below from Justetf.com. The 'Trump effect' around Nov 4th is easy to see:
Trump stocks sectors that should show good performance in next 2 years are (with example ETFs):
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| My core ETFs |
In the UK, we can put up to £20K into a tax-free ISAs each year and any capital gains are completely tax free.
Many people (and particularly the self-employed) will have an emergency 'cash pot' which they can withdraw cash from should an emergency arise, such as if being unable to work due to accident or health, loss of job, unforeseen expenses, etc.
If you need to withdraw funds (e.g. due to temporary loss of income) it is best to withdraw from your emergency cash pot which typically holds at least 3-6 months of income rather than sell your high-gain stocks/ETFs and be out of the market.
Unless you are retired and are drawing a good pension, you may need an emergency pot that is large enough to support you for at least 6 months or so, especially if you don't have any other 'cash' resources.
This pot should not be invested in volatile assets because it needs to be available at all times - if you invested it in the S&P500 and the stock market went down 50% just when you needed the cash, you would only have half the emergency funds you thought you had!
Currency-hedged ETFs are designed to protect investors from currency risk. They are a simple, cheap and effective way for small investors to access currency management techniques that were once the preserve of major financial institutions.
Currency risk affects you negatively when your home currency strengthens against a foreign currency – reducing the value of your assets held in that foreign currency. That means UK based investors are exposed to currency risk on all non-hedged ETFs that trade in overseas securities.
Currency-hedged ETFs are useful because they remove the uncertainty of exchange rate fluctuations. They sterilise your portfolio against the effect of currency so that your overseas investment doesn’t gain when the pound falls or lose when the pound rises.
Let us look at the US Dollar versus the GB Pound.
The last 6 months have been rather weak for Tech ETFs such as IITU and even Global tracker ETFs like the benchmark SWDA.
I see that dividend ETFs show better performance as well as paying dividends.
It expected that we will continue to see volatility during October/November 2024, so it may be better to switch some funds into dividend and value ETFs during this period.
The table below shows some of the best ETFs available in the UK and for comparison IITU and SWDA. Some Dividend ETFs are accumulating funds and some pay dividends.
Do you want to get free shares worth up to £100 (£8-£100 randomly allocated)?
Join Trading 212, invest with my link and we will both get free shares.
https://www.trading212.com/invite/17tLB1ol6b
Trading 212 will pay 5.1% (UK) interest on cash in your T212 accounts, no monthly charge and no share buy/sell transaction charge (apart from Stamp Duty on UK company shares and Foreign Exchange charge of typ. 0.15% on non-GBP conversions). You can also get a debit card with your account to give you a debit card account paying 5.1% on your T212 balance (check spending/ATM withdrawal limitations).
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| SWDA Global Index Tracker ETF (5th August 2024 was a bad day- but the market recovered). |
This year, Physical Gold has outperformed many global equity ETFs including my favourites SWDA and XDEQ. The gold ETF SGLN has shown a gain of 27.5% in one year. Over last 1, 3, 5 and 10 years it has kept pace with all world ETFs. Unlike bonds, gold can also dive when the market dives however.
This Q4 is expected to be volatile and the recent correction has scared some people but the market has now recovered. Investors are scared that a bigger correction may be coming before the end of 2024 and 2025 is also looking unsettled. 2025 is predicted to not be as good as the past two years have been. So some people are now turning to gold as a safer haven for their cash.
The graph below compares my favourite Physical Gold ETF (SGLN) to some other popular ETFs. Volatile Tech ETFs like tech ETFs XLKQ (40% gain this last year) or IITU have outperformed gold. China has a lot of secret gold (reputedly far more than they have declared) and if they need/want to sell some, they could devalue the dollar which would affect USA share prices. This would cause gold to increase in price as countries would want to increase their gold holdings to stabilise their own currency. Russia also hold a lot of gold and may need to sell some to support their Ukraine war.
