A good month for silver, gold, copper and miners (but not for SMRs)!

 I hold the following stocks and ETFs listed in the table below in my Trading 212 accounts.

The current price change (last column) is calculated using the overage price over approx. 30 days.

Invest in Pawn (gold)?

On 19th September 2025 I wrote a blog article 'Is Pawn good for you?'.

In that article I suggested that we take a look at FirstCash FCFS and Ramsdens RFX.

A free and viable alternative to the UK's Net Zero policy

If the UK became a CO2 Net Zero energy country, it will cost us many £Trillions and quosh all our industries - this policy is making the UK one of the most expensive countries in the world to live in.

We could insulate our houses better and save approx. 5% of CO2 emissions (much cheaper than buying a BEV). Eating 10% less meat would save 2% and 20% less waste food would also save 2%.

So we could reduce our emissions by at least 15% simply by insulating our houses better (and short payback period), wasting less food and eating less meat (e.g. eat pulses one day a week instead of eating a bit of a cow).

What if all developed world countries did this?

I asked CoPilot...

Trading 212 update 2026-01-16 + tips

Another good week and I am at an all-time high :-) Over my two accounts (£130k mainly DCA deposits, I am up £26k in 12 months = 20% unrealised gain).

I don't expect this to last however and still have £6k of cash ready for when the correction comes!

T212 Invest (£110k Deposit - 72% IRR)

This was up £2.6k (2%) over the week.

Company Stock picks for 2026

This list below comprises medium to long-term companies which are picked for a UK investor's 2026 portfolio.

The list was shared by the YouTube investor channel 'ISA Investment UK' who has built up his impressive portfolio from £422k to £1600k in just one year. Although he has used options quite a bit - he has over £300k in ETFs, £50k in crypto, £200 in options and £230k in cash - the rest (£800k) is invested in the following companies...

Trading 212 update 2026-01-09 + lessons learned in 2025

I have not reported my Trading 212 account progress for a few weeks as there was not much to report, so here is the 2026 New Year's update which is nicely up!

Trading 212 ISA (20K deposited on April 2025)

I use this account as my more shorter term trading, adventurous account.

Ideas for Finance and Value ETFs in 2026

The US economy and US dollar seem set to improve in 2026. Trump is calling for swingeing cuts in the Fed interest rate. This should be better for US stocks. US banks and credit card companies have not performed particularly well in 2025 for UK investors, partly because of the  USD/GBP Fx rate but this should change in 2026. The GBP\USD Fx rate should not change so much over 2026.

Investments for 2026 - it's a gas!

Data Centers require large amounts of electricity and the fuel needs to be clean and immediately available. Nuclear energy is the long term answer but that is still 6-10 years away and data centers need electricity now! The answer lies in building modular large scale natural gas generators.

Urgent - The value of Silver is exploding!

The spot price of silver seems to be rocketing in the last few days.

You can invest in physical silver or buy a physical silver fund (e.g. SLVP or SSLN) or buy a x2 or x3 leveraged ETF (e.g. £3SLV or $SLV3). 3SLV is up 150% in just one month. There is also the possibility of buying a Euro hedged fund such as OXA2.

My top ETFs for a 2026 UK investor's portfolio

The ETFs below are my current top favourites for a 2026 general investment portfolio for a UK investor.

My core ETFs as a UK-based (GBP) investor would be PSRU(dist.) FTSE UK and PSRW(dist.) FTSE All world. Value stocks should do well, so IWVG(dist.) is another 'safe' horse being an All World Value ETF which has shown good performance.

Trading 212 update 2025-12-19 + tips for 2026

A bit of a scary week, down all week and then a strong recovery on Friday. 

In this blog, I also explain some of my investment plans for 2026.

T212 ISA

My 20K ISA (opened April 2025) is looking better thanks to Friday...

FTSE, S&P 500 or NASDAQ 100 - which performed better over the last 1 and 5 years - you will be surprised!

and the winner is.... the FTSE RAFI ETF PSRU...

Here is a 5-year chart with some other popular ETFs for comparison...

Free eBook on Investing!

I just got a five star rating for my free eBook 'Start Investing Now!' which was nice.

If you found this blog article by accident and wondered if you should start investing (the sooner the better) then this book is for you - and it's FREE!

See my Payhip store page at https://payhip.com/SteveSi to get the free PDF download.

Note: If you like my free eBooks and find the content useful, you can always download another copy and pay whatever you want for it to buy me a coffee ;-)

Steve

If you would like to buy a more detailed book on investing for UK investors, please leave a comment. The new eBook will be only $5 and contain investing tips, trends, tax traps, mistakes (gotchas), etc. There will be no analysis expertise required - the aim is to outline how a typical, young (early 20's) UK worker can become a multimillionaire by the time they retire through sensible spending and slow and steady investing, taking full advantage of the UK tax system.

Best Mining shares for UK investors

Over the last 1, 3 and 6 months, mining ETFs and value ETFs have been performing well.

GIGB (acc) looks very good to me, or if you have a GIA account, then you maye prefer DMAD (dist.) although the fund size of DMAD seems very small it seems to have performed very well. Distributing mining ETFs seems to be quite rare.

Top ETFs in 2025 and JustETF.com guides

 Justetf.com have issued a number of comparison guides for 2025 results.

For UK tax payers, you will probably want an accumulating ETF inside your ISAs and SIPPs, but distributing ETFs inside a GIA account (e.g. Trading 212 Invest account) because this saves having to work out the ERI on all of your accumulating ETFs).

Note that these Justetf guides may not include hedged ETFs and may be filtered (not aimed at UK investors). For instance, compare a hedged S&P 500 with the best unhedged ETF for 2025

For 2026, I am using unhedged USA ETFs however.

Trading 212 update 2025-12-12 - it was all going so well until Friday!

Friday 12/12 started so well, but then it all went downhill in the afternoon, leaving me substantially down by 3% from last week.

T212 ISA

T212 Invest GIA

Tickers most affected by Friday's dip (GIA)

Tickers most affected by Friday's dip (ISA)

I think Tech is going to be very 'wobbly' and volatile next year. My current portfolio is Tech heavy at the moment but I am now interested in buying more commodity stocks.

My plan for 2026

I asked ChatGPT for the best energy tariff

I asked ChatGPT 

'If my electricity is 25.88p per unit and the standing charge is 43.66p for Tariff 1, and Tariff 2 is 24.96p per unit and standing charge is 62.22p, what would my usage need to be in kWhours for my bill to be the same under either tariff?'

It replied 'The usage needs to be approximately 20.17 kWh for the bill to be the same under either tariff.'

From the answer, it seems that one tariff would always be cheaper than the other as long as my usage was 20kWh or more which is easily surpassed as I use about 2000 kWh annually.

So I then asked:

'What would my bill be for one year of 2000 kWh of use under both tariffs?'

and got the reply:

Under Tariff 1, the annual bill would be approximately £676.96 (67695.9p), and under Tariff 2, it would be approximately £726.30 (72630.3p), assuming the standing charges are applied daily.

Simples! 

So I changed my Octopus electricity Tariff to the cheaper 12m fixed tariff since my annual usage will always be greater than a measly 20kWh!

Before I got a cheap Air Fryer (#Amazon ad), I used to put my small cooker oven on every day and my electric energy bill was over £900/yr, so the Air Fryer has easily paid for itself in just one year of use. If your loved ones don't have one already, why not buy them one for Christmas - they save electricity (esp. when you pre-microwave the veggies first in a small amount of water) and improve your diet because you can eat fresh food every day without needing to stand over the hob for ages.

Tip: If you or your relatives already have an Air Fryer, then these disposable paper liners (#ad) make a great gift - they save wear and tear on the caddy's non-stick surfaces and saves washing up! If you like them, you can get them cheaper from Ali Express.

If you have an elderly relative, an electric throw blanket makes a great Xmas gift. It saves energy bills and keeps them nice and warm all evening. Tip: Buy a dark colour as you won't need to wash it so often.

New! - How to check if a firm is a scam

The Financial Conduct Authority (fca.org.uk) have a new facility (Dec. 2025) on their website called Firm Checker.

If you want to check if a firm is legitimate and what it is legally allowed to do, then this will tell you.

It will also alert you to known 'clone' firms (firms of a similar name or firms pretending to be the real firm).

If you or a relative has been contacted by a firm offering you a 'deal', you should be able to check them out.

Tip: Clone firms are often hard to spot. The number that you are called by can be spoofed. You should find the firms website using a search engine, check that the site looks genuine (e.g. test out all links and pages) and then contact that firm using their email contact address and phone number and ask if the person who contacted you is actually an employee.

Alway pay by credit card (not debit card) even if only part payment is made.

Make an Excel spreadsheet to fetch and compare today's stock prices with the 30-day average

I asked the Claude AI to make an Excel macro that would get the current stock price and compare it with a 30 day average price and show me the changes in coloured cells (light or dark green and red). 

Here is what I got:

Trading 212 update 2025-12-05

My ISA and GIA portfolios gained a bit this week (£100+£1k). I have started to sell some of my smaller holdings (<£50) and also sold Regeneron Pharmaceuticals (triggered by a Stop Loss limit) for a profit. My main sell inside my ISA was of Sylvania Platinum which made a very small loss (it did not seem to be moving much over the last 2 months). I rebought Greatland Resources GGP in my ISA (£500 worth - currently 2% up).