How to quickly add a menu entry to the agFM startup menu

If you boot to an E2B USB drive in UEFI mode, the agFM UEFI menu system will be loaded...

Although you can browse the folder structure of Partition 1 using this menu system, the first startup menu screen contains some hard coded entries too.

You can add more menu entries to the top of this menu by creating a new text file into the FAT32 Partition 2 folder \boot\grubfm\user_menu_top.cfg

The example below adds the existing imgptn23 Memtest86 partition image file to the top of the startup menu.

Partition 2 folder \boot\grubfm\user_menu_top.cfg

You can test for $EFI32 or $MBR instead of $EFI64 and use a .ISO file or .EFI file instead of a .imgptn23 file. You can remove the if xxx lines (and fi lines) if you don't want to test the boot mode or test for the existence of the target file.

--class=uefi  determines the icon that is displayed on the left of the menu entry. Here is a selection (some may not be available if you use the default agFM theme)...

See the agFM page or better still get my eBooks for more details ;-)

Are Fisher Investments worth it (plus Crypto and the Genius Act)?

Fisher Investments are a well-known, high profile independent investment advisory firm founded by Ken Fisher in 1979. They manage assets for both individual and institutional clients, offering personalized investment strategies and financial planning resources. Fisher Investments charges a fee based on a percentage of assets under management, with rates varying based on the portfolio size and account type. Typical charges are 1.5% plus an initial on-boarding fee. Overall, including fees, Fisher aim to beat the performance of the global MSCI index (e.g. SWDA).

The Purisima Global Total Return B fund is managed by Fisher and has a TER of 1.51% and we can use it to compare Fisher's investment performance with other benchmark indexes.

Trumps Big Beautiful Bill will weaken the S&P 500 for non-US investors!

Trump's Big Beautiful Bill is expected to weaken the dollar even more as it will increase the USA debt level and weaken US bonds.

During the last 6 months the EUROUSD rate has gone from 1.02 to 1.13 and has been predicted to reach 1.2 in the next 6 months (see chart below).

For UK/EURO investors, the dollar exchange rate has caused a 9% hit on the S&P 500.

Early Amazon Prime Day Deals

There are early Amazon Prime deals available now before Amazon Prime day which officially start midnight Tuesday 8 July! For instance, The 10" Fire Tablet (#Ad) is less than £90 with screen protector.

You can get the 64GB model  (#Ad) for just £103 saving almost £100!

I recently purchased some clip-on, polarised sunglasses (#Ad) for my prescription glasses. At the moment two pairs are less than £6 and they are both of very high quality.

Hot Tip - Hive Digital Technologies up 12% in a day

HIVE is a crypto company into mining, etc.

It looked like it was trending upwards, so I bought 356 shares on July 1st and today it is up 12%.

This is a risky 'bet' but I am holding for a while. It may be undervalued and could reach $4.

I am not an expert in this industry, so please do your own research before investing and if you cannot afford to lose 90% of your deposit then please avoid this stock!

I am also keeping an eye on UK drinks firm Diageo (DGE). This has dropped 24% in a year but has good cash flow and net profit margin of nearly 20%. It too may be undervalued and it looks like it is bouncing up (a hot summer could not hurt it either!). It pays approx. 3% dividend.

P.S. I bought £500 of Rightmove in May 2025, picked up a £4 dividend May 23rd, and sold today for £552 to lock in profit. See here for tip mention.

Try CachyOS for a fast Linux-based Live CD ISO (includes RAM/CPU test programs)

For a fast and responsive Live CD or installation try Arch Linux-based CachyOS. I tried the Desktop version of the Install/LiveCD ISO.

The ISO's grub2 menu also has a MemTest86+ v7.2 option...

Once booted to the Live CD, you can install various versions onto your internal hard disk or just run the Live CD Desktop OS. OCCT is included...

These Stocks and Shares are now on my 'to buy' watch list

In my General Investment Accounts (GIAs), I try to hold just a small number of ETFs for several years without selling. This is mainly because it is a real pain to have to work out Capital Gains Tax (CGT) if I have a  100+ sell transactions in a tax year. I also do the same with my SIPP.

I use my ISA accounts for short term trading. Some people set up watchlists, but because I use Trading 212, I like to actually buy a small amount of any share that is on my current hot list as there are no trading fees on T212.

Because I max out my ISA allowance every year, I cannot add more into my ISAs, so this means I cannot 'gamble' more than is in the ISA accounts (and I also keep at least half of my ISAs in more 'sensible' long-term ETFs like all-world ETFs or S&P 500 or NASDAQ, IITU, IUCM, etc.).

If I see the price of any share in my portfolio trending downwards, instead of selling 100% of the share, I will sell just a portion of it. For instance, if I have £1000 in Palantir and the price starts to dive, I will sell between 50% and 95% depending on how I feel about it's chances of recovery. If I think the shares were a 'one hit wonder' or that they are going to go to zero - only then do I sell 100% of them.

This allows me to keep an eye on all my 'potential' good prospect shares because they are still in my portfolio (albeit some at a low value of just £10 or so).

If any of them are low value, I look to see if now is a good time to buy more, or just wait. I try to keep some cash in my ISA for this purpose. 

Since April 2025, my 20k deposit into my T212 ISA is currently worth 21.86k with an IRR of 10% which isn't too shabby for 3 months considering it was not fully invested until mid-May!

The shares that are on my current 'to buy' watchlist are (next week's possible buys are in bold):

How to add a WinPE USB Recovery drive to E2B or Ventoy (e.g. Lenovo Recovery USB)

If you have a working USB flash drive that contains WinPE, such as that made by the Lenovo USB Recovery Key app., you may need to follow this procedure if you want to add an image of that drive to your E2B USB drive.

See also the .imgptnREP3 section at the bottom of this article if you want to have multiple images on one E2B USB drive without temporarily replacing the first partition of your E2B drive.

This ETF beats the S&P 500, NASDAQ and All-World ETFs over 1mnth, 6mnth, YTD, 1, 3 and 5yrs!

If you are looking for a USA ETF that consistently beats the S&P 500, All-World ETFs and even the NASDAQ 100 and don't live in the USA then try a hedged NASDAQ ETF such as EQGB.

The chart below shows you the YearToDate (YTD) performance.

What speculative ETFs am I buying in June 2025?

The performance of global ETFs (e.g. SWDA) and S&P 500 ETFs (e.g. CSP1) so far this year has been disappointing to say the least!

It seems that bonds are not as safe as we thought either. However, it does appear that rare and precious metals are doing quite well. Two ETFs that have caught me attention are:

• GJGB - VanEck Junior Gold Miners UCITS
• NUCG - VanEck Uranium and Nuclear Technologies UCITS ETF A

Both of these have shown 17% and 26% gains in just the last month: