At last, no more Trading 212 'scam' videos!

If you use Trading 212 to invest in Stocks and Shares or a Cash ISA, you may have noticed that the main screen can be very misleading and it is impossible to know if we have performed well or badly compared to other investors.

Here is an old screenshot which used to just show the total cost price of all the current shares in the portfolio and the gain on those current shares (e.g. current gain on £100k+ account is only £182). However, we do not know how much was deposited into the account in total or what the true return is. This account could have had total deposits of £100,000 for instance, and made various buys and sells over time. £8918 made over a period of 3 months is impressive, but over 5 years it is not so great! The gain of 0.17% does not sound impressive, but if the account had £100k made in deposits, it has actually made £8918 and if that was over a period of exactly one year, that is a 9% true gain (not 0.17%)!

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

Debugging grub2 menus that won't fully boot (e.g. ArchLinux ISOs)

If you need to construct a grub2 menu, but then find that it does not work, you can add in some extra debug lines. For instance the grub2 read command will wait for you to press the RETURN key before continuing execution and an echo command can be used to track progress and view grub2 variable values.

Here is an example grub2 menu display output screen...

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_path

probe -u $root --set=archiso_img_dev_uuid

loopback loop $iso_path

ls

echo

ls (loop)/

echo

ls /

echo

ls /_ISO/LINUX/

echo

echo archiso_img_dev_uuid=${archiso_img_dev_uuid}  iso_path=${iso_path}  root=${root} 

read

linux (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.img

read

}

This menu sets iso_path to the path of the ISO file we wish to boot.

Should I buy this ETF due to the forthcoming ban on TikTok?

TikTok is set to be banned in US law from the beginning of 2025 unless it changes ownership from the current Chinese Bytedance owners. If banned, will other Western countries follow suit too?

If this goes ahead, there is no similar alternative to TikTok, so advertising businesses and video businesses will then go to Instagram, Facebook (both owned by Meta as well as Threads and WhatsApp) and Google/Alphabet (YouTube).

You could therefore invest in Meta and Alphabet now, but if TikTok's Supreme Court appeal is successful, or Trump somehow quashes the ruling, then you could be looking at a large loss!

The ETF IUCM also has top holdings in Meta and Alphabet and its price has increased recently.

How to prepare for a stock market crash

Warren Buffet is accumulating a great deal of cash at the moment. After selling more of Berkshire's equity portfolio, including massive portions of its stakes in Apple (AAPL -0.52%) and Bank of America (BAC 0.72%), the company ended the third quarter with a record $325 billion in cash and Treasury bills on its balance sheet. That's up $48 billion from the previous quarter.

His trick has always been to buy good companies at a low price and hold. It seems he is getting ready to buy again which perhaps means he is expecting to see a bear run and can buy good companies at a cheaper price.

WB doesn't see much gain in top quality large companies at the moment. They seem overvalued. Small/mid-cap companies are not worth his time and effort (he could buy them all outright if he wanted with $325 billion). So I think he is expecting a bit of a correction but meanwhile is probably earning a nice 5%+ on his cash pile whilst he waits.

So what should we do if the SHTF?

ETFs for AI, Robotics and CyberSecurity

I think technology will pay a big part in modernising industry. Labour is becoming increasingly expensive while AI and robotics now have big advantages. Robots can work 24 hours a day, they don't need toilet breaks or get hangovers or go on strike. They are cheap to run and work really fast.

Self-driving cars are a distraction however. Like NASA developing rockets to get us to the moon when really the super-powers just wanted the technology to develop nuclear ICBMs, with AI and robotics, we develop this technology to then build semi-dedicated robots to replace our human workforce.

AI robots can also be good for the environment. Consider a small robot vehicle with four legs, cameras, GPS, LED lights and pincers for arms. Now train it to recognise wheat plants and weeds and set it down in your newly-planted field of wheat. It will work 24/7 in that field and de-weed it for you without pay! It will have a solar powered charging station to dock with every few hours. No weed killers needed! Now also equip it with an insecticide spray and train it to only spray wheat plants which show signs of infestation. This reduces the use and cost of insecticides and means more environmentally-friendly ones can be used.

Such devices have already been developed!

ETFs

So I am picking two ETFs for my 'risky but high returns' experimental portfolio:

Is now a good time to buy UK FTSE shares?

The FTSE 100 index stands just 15% higher than its level of 31 December 1999, representing a compound annual gain of barely 0.5% per annum. 

UK investors, insurance companies and pension companies have started to see the light and are leaving UK stocks for the shinier US market. A few UK companies are even starting to de-list from the FTSE and move over to the New York/NASDAQ stock exchanges.

However, if you discount the USA's 'Magnificent Seven', the UK has still performed quite well. Good UK companies are well diversified and pay good dividends. The UK also has some solid top performers as shown below (gains in 1 year):

• RR      Rolls Royce 67%
• NWG  NatWest Group 63%
• SMDS Smith(DS) Group 51%
• HL       Hargreaves Lansdown 49%
• BARC Barclays 48%

Which core ETF should I pick?

Many people like to have a core+satellite approach with their portfolio.

A popular choice for a core ETF is either:

1. MSCI global index ETF (SWDA or HMWO)
2. MSCI global Quality index ETF (XDEQ)
3. S&P 500 index ETF (VUAA or VNRA or CSPX)

For the past 5 years, the S&P 500 has shown much better returns than the MSCI global index (SWDA) however.

If we look at the performance over the last 5 years, the S&P 500 ETF VUAA has consistently performed better than SWDA or XDEQ and CSPX is slightly better.

ETFs better than EQQQ or S&P 500 in Q4 2024!

Amazon does not feature much in high-performance Tech and Comms ETFs such as IITU or IUCM and comprises only 5% within the Nasdaq EQQQ ETF.

Some Consumer Discretionary ETFs hold a large proportion of Amazon (30%) and also Tesla (15%) such as XUCD (or XSCD for GBP). If you think Amazon and Tesla will do well next year when Trump takes over, this may continue to show good gains. I think Amazon will continue to show good performance next year although import tariffs and tightening advertising regulations in the EU and UK may adversely affect the Amazon online retail business.

Note: The ETF IUCD is very similar to XUCD and is available on Trading 212.

Consumer Discretionary (blue) has shown good gains recently, mainly due to Tesla (and Amazon).

Here are the top holdings of XUCD/IUCD:

Compare holdings:

EQQQ is a compromise, but as there is not too much overlap between XUCD and my two favourite top Tech S&P 500 ETFs IITU (60% in Apple, NVidia, Microsoft) and IUCM (30% Alphabet A+C) you could also add XUCD or IUCD to these two Tech ETFs - see below.

Top stock tips (2024/11/24)

Here are some stocks/funds which seem to be performing well which you may like to research further for investment in the near future.

Raymond James Financial  (RJF)   least risky, 17 P/E

Aberdeen International   (AAB)    

Victory Capital Holdings (VCTR)  currently overvalued?

WisdomTree Inc           (WT)             

Royal London Global Select      

AMD      (AMD)                   cheap buy at present - hold for future gains

Nvidia   (NVDA)                  for 2025 - buy on dip?

Palantir (PLTR)                  risky as has very high value and P/E ???

Nvidia and Victory have ex-dividend in early Dec.   RJF is least risky

Also keep your eye on ASML which seems very undervalued at the moment.

Are Tech stocks safe?

Tech and Financials should both show good performance.

I have favoured XDEQ for world quality stocks with less in the USA and which hold approx 30% Tech but less than 10% in finance. I also have some EQQQ which performs very well when Tech is bullish. However, the Vanguard FTSE ETF VNRG is strong on Tech and Financials and may perform better in the mid-term and has outperformed XDEQ and EQQQ recently.

Please do your own research. This is not financial advice. Most of these are very volatile.