Cheapest UK S&S ISA provider + my Top Secret Stock Picking Tool!

In the UK, the cheapest Stocks and Shares providers are Trading 212 and Invest Engine, however they do not provide all types of accounts (e.g. SIPPs, LISAs) and do not allow purchase of mutual funds (e.g. my current favourite fund - Artemis Global Income Fund).

Some brokerage providers do not offer Flexible ISAs and have quite high trading charges.

A new online tool (under development) is here. It is not yet entirely accurate, but you can view the source data here and check each brokers T&Cs. For instance I have an Interactive Investor account and the charges are shown incorrectly by this online tool, they are actually:

Is Ashtead Technology a good buy?

One of the YouTube channels I follow is that of the Geordie Pig Investor. He used to be very strongly into UK Dividend paying companies, but has since seen the light and has started to strengthen his portfolio with USA and global accumulating ETFs.

In normal times, I would buy mainly World ETFs and US Tech ETFs, but I think the USA is heading for a money-printing phase next year and weakening dollar. The Trump effect has made me cautious.

So I have been looking for a good UK company like RR to invest in and Geordie Pig's pick of Ashtead Technology seems like a bargain to me, especially as it has just gone ex-dividend this month and so its low price should rise again before the next 6-monthly dividend payout in early Jan 2026. His video is below. The shares should be moving out of the AIM market on October 6th and although this will be priced in, it may see greater upwards movement when it hits the London market.

HIVE is still looking strong (+ other progress reports)

Hive is still looking good...

I have also taken some small positions on a few other 'chancers' recently too...

I just sold all my Bitcoin (+ are UK CGT rates about to go up?)!

I have held a small amount of crypto via Coinbase for many years. 

I originally started a Coinbase account because some of my users wanted to make a donation in crypto in gratitude for my free RMPrepUSB and Easy2Boot software.

Donations were usually quite small, but over a period of a few years, it probably added up to about £100. I experimented with this as it grew in value and bought £600 Ethereum with it as it grew in value. A few years ago, I then converted it all back into Bitcoin and this week I decided to cash it all in for about £1200. I am just not convinced Bitcoin or crypto is going anywhere - after all it has had plenty of opportunity. Stablecoins are another offshoot, but the infrastructure costs of maintaining a global blockchain and transaction costs don't seem to live up to the promises. If they did, then the finance companies would be adopting crypto like crazy.

Cashing in my Bitcoin means I have crystallised a taxable capital gain of approx. £600. The Coinbase fee for the conversion to cash and withdrawal was over £20. So much for crypto transactions being cheap (1.66%)!

What to buy with £1200?

This leaves me with the problem of what to buy with the 'free' money.

Where to invest - USA, UK FTSE or EU?

The USA market is looking very volatile at the moment. It is not clear whether USA $ index ETFs are a good investment right now, compared to the UK or Europe (or even other areas such as Japan, etc.).

US stocks have fallen for five days running as traders nervously await a speech from Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell.

I use my GIA accounts for safer, less volatile, longer term investing. In these GIA accounts I hold HMWS, EQGB, XLKQ and IUCM (the first MSCI all world containing approx. 60% US companies and the last three almost 100% US companies). So long-term, I am very Tech biased and thus USA biased.

However, in my £20K ISA account on Trading 212, I have a lot of fingers in a lot of pies as I like to short-term and mid-term trade within this account because any gains within my ISA will not trigger any CGT when sold. 

       



This morning's T212 ISA mix is quite a mess at the moment (IRR 13%) as I am top-slicing many of the larger holdings in order to hold cash, ready to buy on the forthcoming dip.

The promise of AI seems to have been oversold as far as I can see. The chip producers and AI software companies seem to have over promised. AI will benefit certain service sectors and finance sectors however, especially anyone who uses a large number of real live humans for support services, etc.

Another complication is the weak $Dollar rate vs the UK £GBP or EU €Euro. I am avoiding any risk by opting for currency hedged ETFs (e.g. EQGB instead of EQQQ).

The 3-month chart below shows how the $Dollar rate has affected gains on index funds for UK investors:

Stock tip: HIVE is looking good.

I bought HIVE recently and it is showing encouraging signs.

Maybe one to consider?

The great Hedging Experiment!

You will see many YouTube videos which continually tell you how important it is to buy the index ETF which has the lowest TER rate.

The TER is the hidden rate that you are charged. It is the cost of owning the ETF. Differences between different providers are usually very small. For instance the benchmark World ETF SWDA has a TER of 0.20% but the identical ETF HMWS has a TER of 0.15%.

Over 3 years, the gain of these two ETFs were:

SWDA   37.28%  (TER 0.20%)

HMWS  37.83%  (TER 0.15%)

So £10,000 invested for 3 years would give us approx. £78 more if we chose HMWS instead of SWDA.

However, we often have another choice to make when deciding which index ETF to buy and that is whether to buy a currency hedged or unhedged ETF.

Ventoy 1.1.07 now released

 Ventoy 1.1.07 is now available from the Ventoy website. Download here.

If you have added the Ventoy image files to your E2B drive, you can update them by clicking on the Make_Latest_Ventoy_Partition_Image.cmd script which is located on the 2nd partition of the E2B drive in the \e2b\Update agFM folder.

Note that the integrated and modified Ventoy For Easy2Boot is still version 1.0.97 of Ventoy.

New IODD Mini Pro (no more E2B\Ventoy Secure Boot and WinPE issues!)

IODD have just released the new IODD Mini Pro which has a USB 3.1Type C USB connector and improved firmware.

'.RMD' is used for removable media devices, '.VHD' for fixed devices

The Mini Pro is available in capacities of 512GB ($149), 1TB ($185) and 2TB ($248).

Key Changes to the IODD MINI PRO:

New Interface: The adoption of a USB-C type port has significantly

improved its versatility and convenience.

Expanded Storage: It now supports 80mm M.2 SSDs, a change from the

previous 42mm, allowing for a wider variety of capacities and models.

Effective Heat Control: We’ve applied new materials to effectively

reduce heat, ensuring stable performance even during extended use.

Enhanced Security: The encryption password length has been increased

from a maximum of 16 to 76 digits, making security even more robust.

I found an amazing new managed Global fund (37% gain in a year, 150% in five years)!

Back in April 2023, I decided to add an actively managed fund to my portfolio. I chose the Royal London Global Equity Select Fund (Acc) and for 2023 and early 2024 it  proved to be a good choice.

However, the fund manager and  it's Alpha managers left Royal London in April 2024 and since then the performance of this fund has been disappointing to say the least (4% vs. 11% for a benchmark global equity fund)...

Fix for WinPE ISOs (e.g. Ankh Tech WinPE) not fully working from agFM menu system

You may find that some WinPE ISOs boot to the WinPE Desktop OK, but some Desktop icons may be missing or not functional or some shortcuts report a 'Drive Y: not found' error message.

The problem is that many WinPE ISOs are actually designed to be extracted onto a USB drive and not actually booted from an ISO file. In some cases the WinPE startup files may look for the ISO on a drive (so it can mount it as drive Y:) but may not find it.

For instance the Ankh Tech WinPE ISOs an Easy2Boot USB drive may work OK if you legacy boot (and add a _.isope01 suffix to the filename) in legacy BIOS boot mode from the E2B menu system or if using the Ventoy menu, but if Legacy or UEFI booting to the agFM menu, the WinPE ISO may boot OK, but some Desktop and Start Menu items in WinPE may not run.

Another recent share purchase - Comfort Systems (FIX)

I have recently bought shares in Comfort Systems (FIX) on Trading 212 for £500...

Time to switch to unhedged ETFs for UK/EU investors (EQQQ vs EQGB)?

Generally, there is not much difference between hedged and unhedged ETFs for UK investors over the long term, however due to the weakening dollar to GBP rate, instead of buying the Nasdaq 100 ETF EQQQ, I have been buying the hedged ETF version EQGB (which has a higher TER of 0.35% compared to 0.30%) because the performance difference has been quite marked.

In the above chart, we see the hedged EQGB has massively outperformed the unhedged EQQQ so far this year. Almost a 9% difference in the last 6 months is quite a difference!

However, if we look at the performance over just the last month, I can see that the unhedged ETF EQQQ has shown a return of 4.86% vs. 4.04% of EQGB.

I asked ChatGPT 4 which of my stocks I should sell!

ChatGPT can be sent files and asked to comment on them, so I uploaded my Trading 212 Account Statement for July 2025 and asked it to identify the stinkers!

Trading 212 download PDF

I then asked it to identify which ones to 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

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

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.

Market down today - BUY, BUY, BUY! (Friday Aug 1st 2025)

It seems the tariffs on China and Canada imports that we all knew were coming has caused a dip in the market. Amazon has dropped 8% due to profit worries even though results were good. Volume in trading is low today, so the drop is probably due to small retail investment sentiment rather than large volume traders and so it should bounce up again next Monday.

So today may be a good time to buy more of your favourite stock. We all know that we will get a compromise in the end and that China, Mexico and Canada will work around the tariffs. Taiwan are also going to be subject to 20% tariffs on Aug 7th. Unfortunately, in the end it will be the USA and the USA tax payer that will suffer.