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Thursday, 14 August 2025
Fix for WinPE ISOs (e.g. Ankh Tech WinPE) not fully working from agFM menu system
Wednesday, 13 August 2025
Sunday, 10 August 2025
Time to switch to unhedged ETFs for UK/EU investors (EQQQ vs EQGB)?
Friday, 8 August 2025
I asked ChatGPT 4 which of my stocks I should sell!
Two more investment stocks to consider (BNKE and CKHUY)
BNKE
I bought Amundi Euro Stoxx Banks ETF (BNKE) in April 2025 and sold a month later for a 14% profit when it plateaued for a while. Since then, I have been tempted to buy back in but only this week have I taken the plunge. It has gained 22% in the last 3 months, so perhaps I should not have sold so early after all!
- April 2025 Buy £1000
- May 2025 Sold £1140
- Aug 2025 Bought £1000
Wednesday, 6 August 2025
Tip: Uranium and Nuclear Technologies ETF (NUCG) is rocketing!
The NUCG ETF seems to be performing well. Almost 100% gain in one year (45% YTD).
I bought £2k-worth on T212 16th June 2025 and I am so far up about 12%.
See below for 2nd hot tip (500% gain in 1 year)
I bought this to hold long-term and so I was rather pleased that it is rising so quickly. I am not sure if it represents a good buy today, but it has gained 17% in the last month and is not plateauing yet AFAICT.
Holdings are spread between mainly Canada, USA and Japan 1/3 each so it does give some Fx rate diversity too.
One holding is the NuScale Power SMR producer (SMR) which has gained 158% in 3 months and another is Cameco Corp (CCJ) a Uranium producer which has gained almost 60% in the last 3 months.
Please do your own research before investing - this is not investment advice!
NUCG
Monday, 4 August 2025
UK Share tip (BOWL)!
It is looking like the market (esp. USA) is recovering slightly since the small dip last Friday. I will be watching Palantir and AMD closely today for their Q2 results. Intel is also looking good value at the moment.
UK tip
The indoor bowling company Hollywood Bowl (BOWL) may be worth buying and holding until at least the end of this year.
They have recently spent a lot of their cash on updating and refurbing their bowling alleys and have concentrated on enhancing the more profit-generating parts of their business. They are also in the process of a £5 million share buy back by Sept. 2025.
Friday, 1 August 2025
Market down today - BUY, BUY, BUY! (Friday Aug 1st 2025)
Wednesday, 30 July 2025
This week's share tips
Vertiv, which I already hold, has shown a promising 16% gain in the last week.
FuboTV (FUBO) is at last looking better with a 12% gain in the last week (24% in last 3 months).
Robinhood (HOOD) is looking strong but needs to be watched closely today as Q2 results are due at the end of today! 400% gain in a year with reasonably steady chart line.
Fortinet (FTNT) has been stable for 3 months but may jump up depending on Q2 results next Wednesday 6th Aug.
HIMS is rising rapidly as good expected Q2 results on 4th August are anticipated.
IUCM S&P 500 Communications has Meta, Netflix, Alphabet, Disney and telco companies as major holdings is one of my favourite ETFs (I pair with XLKQ) and has not performed as well in the last 6 months as it had the previous 6 months. I have topped up on this $ ETF in the hope of good Q2 results.
AMZN dived in the first 3 months of 2025 due to heavy capital investment and the weakened $, but it now looks to be making a strong recovery.
Classic high flyers PLTR, AMD, NVDA, MSFT, GOOG are being tipped this week, but I prefer to buy via index ETFs such as Nasdaq EQGB or EQQQ and S&P 500 Tech ETFs, etc.
XLKQ/IITU USA Tech and Nasdaq have performed well in last 3 months.
Note: This is not investment advice - i'm just an average bod on the internet!
Tuesday, 29 July 2025
New free eBook - Start Investing Now!
I have just written a new FREE eBook (using Apples free iPages online editor on iCloud) and it is now available from my Payhip store as a free PDF file.
The eBook is targeted at potential UK newbie investors who have thought about starting a Stocks and Shares investment ISA or perhaps a SIPP personal pension fund but have given up because they thought it was way too complicated.
In fact, investing is ridiculously easy these days and online brokers such as Trading 212 make it really easy to start.
Sunday, 20 July 2025
What shares am I buying next week?
What have I bought this month (July 3rd - 18th 2025)?
Thursday, 17 July 2025
Inflation and investing - will the banks rip us off even more now?
Many people in the UK think that investing is 'risky'. This is true if you invest in a few individual companies, but a global index tracker fund is not risky in the long term - it is just more volatile than a savings account (but far more rewarding!).
Even Government bonds are no longer perceived as entirely risk-free assets - their long-term growth potential is now in doubt if you consider inflation too.
In this article, I also discuss a UK index ETF that has returned an average of 17% each year over the last 5 years, gives over 4% in dividends each year and did NOT lose you money in 2022!
Wednesday, 16 July 2025
How to quickly add a menu entry to the agFM startup menu
Tuesday, 15 July 2025
Are Fisher Investments worth it (plus Crypto and the Genius Act)?
Fisher Investments are a well-known, high profile independent investment advisory firm founded by Ken Fisher in 1979. They manage assets for both individual and institutional clients, offering personalized investment strategies and financial planning resources. Fisher Investments charges a fee based on a percentage of assets under management, with rates varying based on the portfolio size and account type. Typical charges are 1.5% plus an initial on-boarding fee. Overall, including fees, Fisher aim to beat the performance of the global MSCI index (e.g. SWDA).
The Purisima Global Total Return B fund is managed by Fisher and has a TER of 1.51% and we can use it to compare Fisher's investment performance with other benchmark indexes.
Sunday, 6 July 2025
Trumps Big Beautiful Bill will weaken the S&P 500 for non-US investors!
Saturday, 5 July 2025
Early Amazon Prime Day Deals
There are early Amazon Prime deals available now before Amazon Prime day which officially start midnight Tuesday 8 July! For instance, The 10" Fire Tablet (#Ad) is less than £90 with screen protector.
You can get the 64GB model (#Ad) for just £103 saving almost £100!
I recently purchased some clip-on, polarised sunglasses (#Ad) for my prescription glasses. At the moment two pairs are less than £6 and they are both of very high quality.
Wednesday, 2 July 2025
Hot Tip - Hive Digital Technologies up 12% in a day
Sunday, 29 June 2025
Try CachyOS for a fast Linux-based Live CD ISO (includes RAM/CPU test programs)
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...
Once booted to the Live CD, you can install various versions onto your internal hard disk or just run the Live CD Desktop OS. OCCT is included...
Saturday, 28 June 2025
These Stocks and Shares are now on my 'to buy' watch list
Sunday, 22 June 2025
How to add a WinPE USB Recovery drive to E2B or Ventoy (e.g. Lenovo Recovery USB)
Thursday, 19 June 2025
This ETF beats the S&P 500, NASDAQ and All-World ETFs over 1mnth, 6mnth, YTD, 1, 3 and 5yrs!
Sunday, 15 June 2025
What speculative ETFs am I buying in June 2025?
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:
- GJGB - VanEck Junior Gold Miners UCITS
- NUCG - VanEck Uranium and Nuclear Technologies UCITS ETF A
Both of these have shown 17% and 26% gains in just the last month:
Sunday, 8 June 2025
How to back test your portfolio for free
Saturday, 7 June 2025
My ETFs for H2 2025
Wednesday, 21 May 2025
Hot Tip: Crypto shares up 200+% in 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!
This company has pledged to buy a large amount of BitCoin and seems to be rocketing. It often has a trading halt on it for a few hours but it is currently trading.
Friday, 16 May 2025
Warning: Marks & Spencer cyber hack - hackers now have all my customer details!
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.
Tuesday, 13 May 2025
New Windows 10/11 AutoUnattend.xml generator
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...
Saturday, 22 March 2025
Legacy Boot with persistence for Kaspersky Rescue Disk ISO 2025 using E2B (grub4dos)
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.
Tuesday, 11 March 2025
How I made 30% in one week from the current market chaos
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.
Saturday, 1 March 2025
This Euro sector ETF has gone up 30% in just 6 months!
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.
Thursday, 30 January 2025
Can I build a long-term Global ETF portfolio to rival the S&P 500?
- Tech - e.g. IITU or XLKQ
- Communications - e.g. IUCM
- Commodities - e.g. COMM
- Finance - e.g. IUFS
- Consumer - e.g. IUCD
- Utilities - e.g. IUSU
Tuesday, 28 January 2025
Easy2Boot 2.21 released
Add WMIC using: Windows 11 – Settings (Winkey+I) – Apps – Optional Features – View Features – WMIC – Install
A Windows restart/reboot my be required after installing WMIC.
Raindrops on roses... (a few of my favourite ETFs)
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.
My favourite ETFs, ordered by fund size. |
I tend to not sell ETFs such as SWDA, XDEQ, XLKQ, HMWS, CSP1 and EQQQ, and so I hold these in my SIPP and GIA accounts and don't sell them so as not to incur capital gains tax.
Monday, 27 January 2025
Tech stocks down today by 6% - here's what I am doing (27-Jan-2025)
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.
S&P 500 (2025-01-27) |
Wednesday, 22 January 2025
Ventoy 1.1.00 is released today
- 2025/01/22 --- 1.1.00 发布
- Update to latest Shim (Fix verifying shim SBAT data failed) (#2947)
- Support eweOS ISO (#3068)
- Fix the boot issue of SystemRescue 11.02+ (#2958) (#3058)
Monday, 20 January 2025
Online calculator for UK Capital Gains Tax using www.cgtcalculator.com (examples for Interactive Investor and Trading 212)
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.
Wednesday, 15 January 2025
What is a 'safe' and simple investment stock portfolio for family and friends?
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:
- Is an income required (Accumulating or Dividend portfolio)?
- Tax laws in your country of residence and using them to your best advantage
- Attitude to risk and loss (would you mind if your portfolio went down 40% in a year?)
- Do you need access to the money within a few years - e.g. to buy a house or car?
Monday, 13 January 2025
Saturday, 11 January 2025
At last, no more Trading 212 'scam' videos!
Friday, 10 January 2025
What are the UK equivalents of the USA ETFs like VOO, SPY, VTI, VT, QQQ, VTV, SCHD, etc.?
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.
Whole market Funds
VT & VTWAX
Monday, 6 January 2025
Debugging grub2 menus that won't fully boot (e.g. ArchLinux ISOs)
and here is the grub2 menu that was used...
menuentry "Arch Linux with Parameters" {set iso_path="/_ISO/LINUX/archlinux-2024.12.01-x86_64.iso"search --no-floppy -f --set=root $iso_pathprobe -u $root --set=archiso_img_dev_uuidloopback loop $iso_pathlsechols (loop)/echols /echols /_ISO/LINUX/echoecho archiso_img_dev_uuid=${archiso_img_dev_uuid} iso_path=${iso_path} root=${root}readlinux (loop)/arch/boot/x86_64/vmlinuz-linux archisobasedir=arch img_dev=UUID=${archiso_img_dev_uuid} img_loop=${iso_path}initrd (loop)/arch/boot/x86_64/initramfs-linux.imgread}
This menu sets iso_path to the path of the ISO file we wish to boot.