Trading 212 Update 31/10/2025 + tips and ideas

Weekly progress report

Another good week.

The table below shows the weekly stats for the last 8 weeks on my T212 accounts (ISA and GIA):

T212 Accounts (£)

Deposit  Age    12Sep  19Sep  26Sep  3Oct   10Oct  17Oct  24Oct  31oct  Result(wk) (IRR since start)      

£20,000  7mths  24,700 25,083 24,619 25,225 25,622 25,790 25,919 26,077 158        (ISA 31% - 20k in April)

£70,000 15mths  76,474 78,574 78,415 80,057 80,138 80,503 82,059 84,871 2,812      (GIA 62% - DCA over 15mnths)

Overall gain this week is +£2970.

So my £90K T212 accounts (£20k ISA + £70K GIA) now totals £110,948 (+£20,948 gain).

     

T212 Invest GIA

Recent Investments

Here are some of my recent purchases, the small FuboTV buy is just for monitoring purposes.

You may like to do your own research on these. Centrus Energy was doing really well...

Golden rules(ish)

Centrus Energy (uranium and tech solutions) was looking so good that I bought more - and then it tanked -27%! It has a promising future however and so I am still holding it.

Time and time again, I see some shares that I have bought suddenly rocket up by 10% or more, only to drop almost as quickly. I really must get into the habit of selling most of it when this happens!

Here are my rules on speculative investments (inside an ISA):

1. If it drops more than 20% and I am not sure it will recover - then sell it.

2. Set a stop loss at 80% on very speculative shares.

3. If a share rockets by 10% or more and then briefly plateaus, sell 50% or more of it.

4. Never buy AIM stocks, esp. drug or mining companies.

5. Never buy on a tip from the media.

I don't like to set limits or stops on shares because I find they are unreliable. For instance, I can set a stop loss to sell at a certain price and T212 will see the price dip for just a minute below this price and stop me out - it is almost as if it knows where I have set the limit - oh wait - they do know, because I told it!

Also, setting a stop loss may not work quick enough. A stock can suddenly dive but by the time my sell order hits the market, the actual price it was sold at is way below the stop price that I set. Not much can be done about it, but I tend to set the stop price higher (e.g. at -15% rather than -20%). I also don't sell all the stock, I may sell 30-50% to take some profits or minimise a loss. The transaction will then alert me and I can quickly look at the situation and decide whether to sell more (or even buy them back).

However, I cannot honestly say that I never break these rules, but if and when I do, I don't 'bet' more than I mind losing!

Losses can kill you!

In my early days of investing, I would bet on small companies that I believed in using signiificant amounts of my cash only to watch it slowly sink to zero, all the time thinking that the shares must take off soon. I analysed why I held for so long, and the answer was usually becaused I believed their 'story'. So these days I let the chart do the talking. If a chart is drifting downwards or is very spiky, then I am very wary!

Over the years, I have learnt to try to avoid losses at all costs. If I sell too early and don't make as much profit as I could have done then I am not too upset. However, if I have a large holding in a risky stock and I lose 50% of my stake, then I will have to make 100% gain later in order to recover the loss - and that will be very difficult. So I prefer to set a mental stop loss at -20% (if not an actual stop loss) and if it falls below that then I sell.

My favourite type of stock is one that shows a steady or staircase growth to the right of the chart. Charts that have really large and long dips do not inspire confidence.

As I have explained previously, I use my T212 ISA account for short and mid-term trading and keep longer term holdings in the Invest GIA account. In April 2026, I will sell 20Ks-worth of the Invest GIA acount to move it into the ISA.

Although trading on T212 has been exciting, I am slowly coming to realise that I may be over-trading in my ISA account. I could just have easily picked 6 index ETFs and chilled. I always seem to be tempted by the massive gains that some stocks have shown!

Tips

I currently have approx. 33K sitting in cash in my other GIA. I cashed out my accumulating ETFs before October 30th so that I would not have to work out the ERI dividend tax for the 2025/2026 tax year and all future years. I now want to buy distributing ETFs with that 33K, but I was waiting for a market dip. It doesn't help that the USD/GBP exchange rate is stronger this week and so has made all US shares more expensive (and more valuable)!

It is looking like I might be able to buy back in again next week.

The distributing ETFs I am looking at buying for my ii GIA are:

SHLG

BOTG

WITS

INRG

Because they are in a GIA account, I would like to leave these for at least a few years and re-invest any dividends.

Most of the 33K will be probably be invested in WITS.

ii ISA

I also have an ISA with ii, in which my main holding are:

Artemis Global was going through a rough patch in performance in October, but it has now recovered.

The other ETFs/shares have not done too badly either.

Gold Mines!

A list of the best performing S&P 500 stocks so far this year is shown below:

What stands out to me is that Seagate and Western Digital are both leading hard disk drive makers and hard drives are required in great numbers by anyone setting up AI and Date centers.

I guess this seems obvious in hindsight. If gold is discovered, you get rich by selling picks and shovels.

These two companies have gone up by 9% and 15% in just the last week.

Picking winners is always difficult and you would have to have a degree of luck to pick the winners from the list above a year ago, however, it seems to me that Seagate and WD are pretty safe investments and I may well buy these on another dip. I cannot find an ETF to invest in that has more than 2% of either of these two companies.