Ventoy 1.1.00 is released today

At long last, a new version of Ventoy  (not 'Ventoy for Easy2Boot') has been released by LongPanda.

Ventoy 1.1.00 download

• 2025/01/22 --- 1.1.00 发布

1. Update to latest Shim (Fix verifying shim SBAT data failed) (#2947)
2. Support eweOS ISO (#3068)
3. Fix the boot issue of SystemRescue 11.02+ (#2958) (#3058)

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.

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?

Try this free website for great Stock Market heat maps!

 Get todays heatmap!

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: