'Be greedy when others are fearful'

You may have noticed that the stock market is down this week! My £203k Trading 212 accounts are down £25k. 

This is a temporary blip as far as I can see. 

AI says this...

StockPickers

I found a stock picker at https://stockgrader.investorplace.com/analyze

You type in your tickers separated by commas, e.g. hpe, dell, mu, , intc, amd, ter, vrt, mrvl, gev, bby, dlo, wdc, stx, amzn,axti, vst, fcx

and I get...

T212 Portfolio update £185k 16/10/2026 - £15k down!

A very bad week for all stocks, especially Tech stocks this week! Gold and metals showed a sign of recovery this week but were still down over the whole week. 

I think (hope) the market will recover next week. This is not a bubble popping. The demand for AI is strong and I expect many businesses to start announcing higher annual profits next year due to the use of AI and a reduction of their workforce for 'greater efficiencies'. I especially expect +10% increase in companies involved in retail, finance, manufacturing and healthcare. As more AI data centers get connected (plugged in to power), I expect share prices of Tech companies to pick up again. 

Choosing your main portfolio's core ETF

Most investors have a main central core ETF plus 1-6 other ETFs as satellite holdings. They then may have 5-10% of their holdings in other more risky shares such as single companies.

In a taxable GIA account, it is best to stick to that one core ETF and keep adding into it as well as your satellite ETFs. Performance over the long term is key. Also the TER should be as low as possible too.

For an ISA, you might choose an accumulating ETF, but for a GIA you probably want to choose a distributing ETF because this usually means they have zero ERI and you won't need to calculate ERI every year when you fill in your HMRC self-assessment tax form.

Here are a few world ETFs you might like to consider...

T212 Portfolio update £200k 09/10/2026 + NU Holdings, Lenovo and Gold

I had set some stop losses on some non-ETF holdings so as prices went down this week, some holdings (approx. £13k) were sold off for a profit.  

Buys

NioCorp £523
Vistra £205
Lenovo £4000
ZENAtech £100
WDC £200

Sells

Intel £158
Meta £1625
HPE £3000
CME £1100
CAT £5936
Eaton £1146

Cash
Invest GIA £8616
ISA £0

NU was my best performer this week

Tax and Capital Expenditure

Recent share buys (having a flutter!)

I have been using stockanalysis.com, simplywallstreet.com, www.hellostocks.ai, snowball-analytics.com and Trading 212 to find some good value stocks which should do well in the next 12 months (median future gain in parenthese)...

Sector and Thematic Investing with ETFs

President Trump has managed to complicate the world economy. International trade has been hampered by tariffs and restricted passage. Executive orders have distorted the economy by lighting a fire under some companies and extinguishing others! Oil prices have rocketed, inflation, interest rates and bond yields have risen and yet gold has not. Some companies are trading at way over 100 P/E (TSLA x340, AMD x160) while others are valued at less than x20 P/E (Micron, Cisco, IBM).

It is difficult to know where to invest and how to invest safely!

Sector Investing vs. Thematic Investing

Thematic investing is often confused with sector investing, but there are some key differences. Sector investing puts investment funds into specific segments of the economy. Popular segments include energy, healthcare and information technology. Thematic investing is different; it uses broader technological advances to improve output spanning across multiple sectors. Popular themes include clean energy and robotics.

T212 Portfolio update £202k 2026-10-02 + whole T212 Portfolio Analysis

Prices went down during the week but recovered towards the end of the week. My Invest account thus stayed level but the ISA had lost over £1k this week.

Top funds/ETFs - can I stick to my new plan?

After spending several years having fun chasing stocks which I hope will show me a nice profit, I have found it to be quite a challenging experience.

Across my Trading 212 ISA+GIA accounts I have 85 different holdings. This is becoming more and more difficult to keep track of. The problem is that in several cases, I have found that I should have sold earlier but I missed the declining price movement amongst all the other price movements of all the other holdings. I know 85 is way too many but I just can't help myself!

T212 Portfolio update £204k 2026-09-25 + Snowball Analytics and JISA's

Much to my surprise, shares stayed high over the whole week. Tuesday was the best day and due to Trump/Xi/Hormuz, etc. the market saw good news. 

However, I am still expecting a dip in share prices next week when it all falls apart again.

I took advantage of the high prices to sell a few shares but also make a few buys...

Tech stocks still have a way to go!

I used my free trend chart to plot semiconductor stocks over the last 2 months.

0992.HK is Lenovo, WCBR.L ($)/CYSE (£) is a cybersecurity ETF, HYNX.F is Hynix, 005930.KS is Samsung and IWVG.L is an All World Value ETF whose top stock is 13% Micron MU (earnings due on Sept. 30th 2026).

Nearly all are trending upwards this month!

PM Andy Burnham's Budget Capital Gains Tax rate hike and how to prepare for it

It is rumoured that in the budget on October 28th 2026, Capital Gains Tax may be brought in line with Income Tax. This would mean a Capital Gains Tax rate rise from 18% or 24% to new rates of  20%/40%/45% depending on your income tax band. Typically, any CGT rate hike takes place immediately after the budget.

For higher rate tax payers, the jump from 24% to 40% CGT is quite substantial.

Stock tips I am buying this week (and they all begin with A)! 2026-09-21

I have put in for some limit orders on three of the following US stocks today and I am also watching Moderna closely too but not yet buying at the current price...

For research I used the free stock list app HelloStocks.ai (S&P only) and SimplyWallStreet for the first three A stocks. I picked them for value, future growth and health. Moderna is my own (very risky) pick.

T212 Portfolio update £201k 2026-09-18 + tips

The week started badly with my T212 portfolios down £7k but they have since recovered to about the same level as at the start of the week.

Note that both these T212 portfolios are my 'play' accounts. I also have other holdings in simple generic All World Index funds, so these T212 stock picks are not what I would suggest for an average person's investment portfolio. You do not know my full financial position just as I do not know your financial position! The average investor should hold mainly All World index tracker ETFs with perhaps 10%-40% in other index ETFs depending on your risk/volatility threshold! Do not copy my trades just because my IRR is 50-90% over 2.5 years - I was probably just lucky!

Try out my new share chart tool for trend spotting!

Most stock charts allow you to specify a time period and some allow you to also plot a moving average line, but I wanted to easily spot trends (especially in ETFs).

For instance, is Copper on an upward trend? What about Gold or the S&P 500? What about Euro banks?

When plotted on a chart, I needed to smooth out the daily kinks but also easily change the time period. For instance, Copper may have come down recently, but has it gained over a whole year or five years?

Looking for a growth ETF for H2 2026 and 2027 - Try IWVG

I already have large holdings in MSCI Core world class funds. In my Trading 212 ISA and GIA I also hold quite a bit of gold and metals miners and tech companies.

I am looking for a good global index fund which is not too heavily dependant on the US or on any one sector.

Trading 212 update £201k Portfolio 2026-09-11 + a look at Vanguard's VALL and my recent buys + tip

My ISA lost approx. £1.5k this week and my Invest account approx £500.

Investments for Q4 2026

High bond rates and high inflation seems likely. We have high rates of borrowing. Most bonds, equities and interest-paying funds will not do very well if this escalates.

In these circumstances, it make sense to diversify away from over-valued US stocks such as tech stocks and invest more in essential commodities that must be bought by everyone, no matter how much they cost (such as energy or toilet rolls!).

Trading 212 £203k Portfolio update 2026-09-05

This week saw a drop in value of about £4k followed by recovery on Thursday/Friday. The drop was probably mostly due to the bond market and high Treasury yields but the good performance figures from Tech stocks this week from Oracle and Broadcom also helped. So I am up £2k from last week and about the same as two weeks ago. Overall, I am £53k up on my total deposits of £150k over a period of approx. 30 months. IRR on the two accounts is 89% (GIA) and 53% (ISA) - compared to an MSCI Core SWDA IRR over the same period of approx. 20%.

Trading 212 £201k Portfolio update (+ investment opportunities)

Both portfolios were down a bit this week due to a bad Friday, having reached £204k on Thursday. 

Trading 212 £203k portfolio update 22/08/2026 + Tips

After a bad Tuesday, the market seems to have recovered, despite the news of the USA economy debt being serious.

£150 Deposit (+£53k)

Market movements this week (see video below)

T212 Portfolio £201k update + thoughts on the USA, etc.

My two T212 accounts together have finally broken the £200k barrier (£150k deposited over 30 months)! It probably won't last but it's still nice to see. My IRRs are now 50% for my Trading 212 Stocks ISA and 90% for my Invest account.

Semiconductor gains have been variable but my metals holdings (gold, silver, rare earths, copper, etc.) seems to finally be on the rise after being undervalued for months.

What ETFs would I choose for a 'hands-off' Junior ISA?

Recently, a friend asked me about how to open a Junior ISA for their child and what stocks they should buy within their ISA (max. deposit £9k per child per year). When their child reaches 18, they hopefully would have a nice fund on which they can draw on for college or a car or whatever. Another objective however, was to hopefully interest the child in the power of investing in the stock market (and the earlier they start, the better!).

If you have child or grandchildren, you should get them started with a Junior ISA as soon as they can read and have pocket money. Two parents + four grandparents can contribute on birthdays and Xmas each year. Over the years, the kids can decide what satellite ETFs they want to invest in (keep the core as a world global ETF) and they will come to appreciate the effect of compound interest (which Einstein described as the 'eighth wonder of the world').

I wanted a minimum maintenance/set-and-forget portfolio (at least to start with). This led me to think about a world ETF as a core and perhaps one or two satellite ETFs. They would have to be accumulating ETFs based in Ireland for low tax and have a low TER since they will be running for 15 years or so. It would also be nice to have some weighting for UK\EU to allow for Fx rate fluctuations.

The chart below shows SWDA as the core ETF (though I would actually buy the equivalent but cheaper ETF HMWS) and a few of my favourite high-return index ETFs as satellite holdings.

T212 Portfolio £197k update + tips

The last few weeks has been interesting. My portfolio seems to have recovered and I am up £7k this month on Trading 212...

£150k Portfolio - Invest (£110k deposited) + ISA (£40k deposited) 

I added £10k to my GIA a 3 weeks ago when stock prices were down and mainly bought AI stocks including disks and memory companies. These are now climbing into profit again (having sold for a nice profit earlier when they were peaking).

Here are the Rate of Return figures for the two accounts:

GIA IRR  83%  (19% IRR YTD, 32% IRR 1YR)  Opened Feb    2024  £110k deposited over 26 months

ISA  IRR  46%  (20% IRR YTD, 28% IRR 1YR)  Opened April 2025  £20k+£20k deposits in 15 months

Issue: Cannot update Ventoy partition images on E2B drive to latest v1.1.17

 To fix:

Go to Partition 2 of the E2B USB drive and run

"\e2b\Update agFM\Download and update agFM_v2.cmd" which will update agFM to v1.A4.

This will also update the "\e2b\Update agFM\Make_Latest_Ventoy_Partition_Image.cmd" cmd file.

You can then run that command file and it should make the latest Ventoy v1.1.17 partition images instead of Ventoy v1.1.16.

I asked Codex to fix my Wordpress Asgaros forum issue - and here is what happened...

My UK capital gains tax calculator website www.ukcgt.xyz had an issue. All my posts on the Asgeros forum on the site where displaying my private email address!

I tried asking Google for a solution and also ChatGPT on Google and spent many hours trying to solve the problem to no avail.

Finally, I tried Codex.

T212 Update £181k portfolio - I'm DOWN £12k in a week!

I have just added a £10K new deposit to my T212 Invest account, so the £181k value is actually over £12k down from last week.

AI is down again today - I am still BUYING!

AI shares are down today but compute needs are going up. Companies need more AI compute not less. Demand is strong. Large companies say they intend to spend more on AI, not less. They want their own in-house models to do their own training and develop their own agents because they all see the value in AI but do not want to be held hostage by AI providers and their haphazard model costs and changes.

Time to buy AI picks and shovels companies again?

Recent doubts about AI not being profitable has caused a sharp price drop (10-15%), but now the market is beginning to think they have over reacted! Memory suppliers have secured safe, long-term orders. Large companies have increased their capital expenditure on AI, not decreased it. Quarter profit numbers are showing positive gains.

Memory manufacturers are starting to recover today.

T212 £183k Portfolio Update and memory suppliers

My two accounts were both down at the end of this week. During the week, some of my holdings were stopped out and sold. 

Stock that stopped out and sold was Moderna (sold £1k for £400 gain) and Micron (sold £2.7k for £1.1k gain). Also OSCR (sold £1923 for £368 gain).

I topped up on AMAT, HYNIX and Korea ETFs. Also Solar Energy Infrastructure.

Here are a few of my newer purchases:

Samsung and Hynix are down - massive buying opportunity!

There is a memory shortage. There will continue to be a memory shortage for at least the next 3 years. The SK Hynix and Samsung price is down 20% this week. 

Planned/announced capacity ramp (HBM/AI-memory related), as reported by recent coverage:

T212 £186k Portfolio update 2026-07-03

Not much change (-£1k)  overall this week. I used the tech stock dip to buy what I hope are cheaper shares, so I now have little spare cash left now in both accounts.

• Bought £2K of MSFT at $371
• Bought £1k Corning at $254
• Bought £1k META at $598
• Bought £1k Broadcom at $366

Here are recent purchases this week (TOELY was last week).

T212 £186k Portfolio update 2026-06-26 and outlook for the future

This week I saw a drop from £193k at the end of last Friday to £186.5k at the end of this Friday 26th June.

Invest IRR 90% and ISA IRR 42%

I had set some stop loss sells and some of these had triggered. Later on in the week, I bought a few back at a cheaper price.

Here is a list of some of the GIA the trades, with the reason and the current price - this is mainly for my notes, but you may find it interesting - not all decisions were 'good' (green background if price went up after selling)!

Will AI Data Centres fail us?

AI companies seem to be the tech darling still - but will it last if they are not profitable and they cannot be connected up to a 24x7 supply of electrickery?

Ramsdens (RFX) agrees to GBP203 Million takeover by FirstCash

I had posted a few blog articles on buying pawn brokers Ramsdens and  FirstCash because these businesses usually do well when the gold price is high and times are hard (people need cash quickly).

Is Pawn good for you - 19th Sept 2025

Invest in Pawn (gold) - 23rd January 2026

and told you I bought £500 of RFX in my 23rd May 2026 blog

Ramsdens has just shot up 30% due to the news that FirstCash is buying Ramsdens.

Trading 212 £193k portfolio update + tips

A great week for my Trading 212 portfolio, gaining over £10k in a week!

£140k deposited over 2 years shows a £53k uncrystallised profit

The Hormuz  'memorandum of misunderstanding' helped a lot, and also the US stock market being closed on Friday helped too!

I have set up stop sells on many of my ISA stocks so that should the market fall on Monday, I will try crystalise my profit. I will buy back in when prices are low again.

Invest GIA (IRR 104%)

ISA (IRR 53%)

I made a few minor trades during the week. The main one was to sell Sandisk at $1977 for a quick £60 profit as it looked like it was falling (but in fact it continued to rise another 1%).

Is Tech now overpriced?

We have more AI IPOs to come and the picks and shovels companies (Micron, Hynix, Seagate, WD, Intel, AMD, nVidia, etc.) seem to be back in favour as many people are beginning to think that AI companies and companies who have invested heavily in AI will have problems actually building the data centres, powering them and especially making a profit from them.

There must be an awful lot of memory, disks and CPUs sitting in warehouses that are destined for data centres but they may never actually get used. Higher-end CPUs/GPUs will be losing value as they are superseded by more recent hardware which is cheaper to run and requires less infrastructure.

Large companies who are currently buying AI as SaaS (and paying hefty subscription fees) are now beginning to want to build their own AI servers so that they are in control of their own AI service and cost constraints.

Companies like HP, Dell and Lenovo may be able to pick up the unutilised AI data centre hardware components quite cheaply and sell them on into the retail enterprise server market.

I am very worried that pure AI SaaS providers will never be profitable and they are asking the retail investor market to fund their folly and then sell their shares and leave the retail investors holding the baby. But I could be wrong.

I don't think the large volume AI users care if they use Deepseek, Claude, ChatGPT or Gemini - what they do care about a lot, is the 'cost of compute'. I think the capital costs of AI will come down and the energy costs will come down too as better, cheaper and more efficient hardware is developed. At the moment, the AI 'dealers' are giving us free or cheap, highly addictive drugs. Once we are hooked, we will then become dependent on them. There will be drug wars, but in the end, it will be a price competitive 'commodity' market.

Packaging is the bottleneck!

Although silicon chip factories can produce more wafers, the chips still need to be packaged. Apparently, there is a big bottleneck here, as most chip packaging is done offshore.

Let us look at a few packaging companies...

Amkor has grown 358% in a year and shows no signs of slowing down!

ASE (ASX) can be bought only in a T212 Invest account - but it has shown similar growth.

1. Foundries & IDMs (Integrated Device Manufacturers)

• Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC): Dominates the market; Nvidia alone has reserved roughly 60% of TSMC's CoWoS packaging allocation.
  • Capacity Increase: Growing advanced packaging at a massive 80% compound annual growth rate (CAGR). TSMC is aggressively ramping up two new specialized packaging sites in Taiwan and is establishing an advanced packaging site alongside its Arizona foundry complex to support localized US assembly by 2027. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]
• Intel Corporation (INTC): Operates extensive internal packaging setups in New Mexico (US), Kulim, and Penang (Malaysia).
  • Capacity Increase: Intel is expanding packaging availability to external customers and is qualifying its EMIB-T packaging tech for massive client volume ramps through the latter half of 2026. [1, 2, 3]
• Samsung Electronics (Samsung): Launching a complete "turnkey" ecosystem that bundles memory, foundry nodes, and proprietary I-Cube advanced packaging together.
  • Capacity Increase: Building out entirely new HBM packaging infrastructure across South Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore, which are scheduled to scale aggressively through 2026 and 2027. [1, 2]

2. Pure-Play OSATs (Assembly & Test Specialists)

• ASE Technology Holding (ASE): The global OSAT market leader, controlling a 15.2% revenue share of advanced packaging via its robust 2.5D and 3D solutions.
  • Capacity Increase: Expanding localized footprints and working in close technical lockstep with TSMC to absorb downstream "on-substrate" chip assembly. [1, 2]
• Amkor Technology (AMKR): A premier US-headquartered OSAT provider focusing on high-density fan-out (HDFO) packaging.
  • Capacity Increase: Amkor has tripled its global capital expenditures budget. Its massive new manufacturing campus in Peoria, Arizona broke ground late last year and is accelerating tool installations to begin active production by mid-2027 to package US-fabricated chips. [1, 2, 3, 4]

3. Equipment Suppliers (The Hidden Enablers)

• ASML Holding (ASML): Historically a lithography leader, ASML is seeing an aggressive revenue surge from selling tools tailored toward advanced packaging and heterogeneous integration.
  • Capacity Increase: Ramping up production across two new US manufacturing locations and breaking ground on a major campus expansion in Eindhoven to push out backend tools faster through 2027. [1, 2, 3]
• ASMPT (ASMPT): A major listed supplier in Singapore specializing in advanced die-bonding systems.
  • Capacity Increase: Booking out its manufacturing pipelines through 2027 as foundries struggle to acquire the high-precision hybrid bonders necessary for modern 3D stacking. [1, 2, 3, 4]

2. ASE Technology Holding Co. (ASX) — The Pullback Leader [1]

• The Rationale: ASE is the definitive giant of the OSAT landscape, executing roughly 45% of total elite backend revenue. Because it is a massive structural asset, it has absorbed incredible capital inflows. However, it recently experienced healthy, brief technical pullbacks, taking the short-term froth out of its price. [1, 2, 3]
• Moving Averages: It dropped below its short-term 20-day exponential structures, turning neutral on basic technical indicators like the Relative Strength Index (RSI). This localized "cooling off" makes it an incredibly attractive buy point for long-term investors entering the cycle. [1, 2]
• The Play: Accumulate shares immediately as it validates technical support. It offers the safest institutional-grade exposure to TSMC's downstream overflow. [1, 2]

2. Amkor Technology, Inc. (AMKR) — The Sovereign Security Premium [1]

• The Rationale: At a trailing P/E of ~51.3x, Amkor is certainly not cheap historically. However, it is fundamentally underweighted when considering its unique geopolitical position as the premier US-onshored advanced packaging facility. [1, 2, 3]
• Moving Averages: Amkor features strong momentum, trading roughly 26% higher than its 50-day SMA and nearly 89% above its 200-day structural baseline. While this signifies a clear extension, the aggressive volume profile suggests institutional accumulation. [1, 2]
• The Play: This is a "growth at a reasonable price" narrative within the AI architecture sphere. Rather than buying a full position all at once, utilize a dollar-cost averaging approach to build exposure over the quarter to protect against near-term macro sector volatility.

---

I will track these two (ASX and AMKR) and dollar-cost average into them over the next month or so. I will use top-sliced profits from other shares to provide the cash.

AMAT - Financial Impact of the ASMPT NEXX Buyout

Applied Materials (AMAT) recently purchased $120m of older packaging technology from ASMPT. 

Wall Street has largely looked past any minor near-term drag. Analysts see the integration of NEXX's large-format electrochemical deposition (ECD) tools as a structural growth catalyst. It expands AMAT’s total addressable market within the $3.5 billion advanced packaging equipment sector, positioning the company to capture larger, high-margin package deals for 2027 server designs

My investment in AMAT seems to be paying off (88% gain), hopefully there is still more growth to come...

My thematic investing in 'picks-and-shovels' tech companies has so far paid off, let's hope there is no crash to follow!