Trading update 2025-11-07 + tips

Weekly progress report

Oh dear, it was all going so well...

A bad week this week, albeit a slight uplift late on Friday.

The table below shows the weekly stats for the last 9 weeks on my T212 accounts (ISA and GIA):

Buying a cheap Windows 10 Product Key for my new Windows 11 system

I have bought a new mainboard, CPU, RAM and M.2 drive in order to build a new Windows 11 system, but I wanted to keep my old Windows 10 system too. I had several spare ATX PSUs already.

These two large S&P 500 companies gained over 200% in the last 6 months!

Two giant S&P 500 companies have beaten Tesla, SOFI, Palantir, TSM, AMD, Intel, nVidia, etc. in the last 6 months but no one is talking about them! What is more they have a virtual monopoly on a very large market.

Trading 212 Update 2025-10-31 + 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):

Future stock market volatility prediction & Trump's Crypto deals

If you are holding cash in your ISA or GIA Investment accounts at the moment, you may be hoping to buy in on a future dip.

Gold and Silver has undergone a correction recently. The S&P and Global indexes are up however.

ChatGPT has prepared the following event list for me:

Trading 212 Update 2025-10-24 + tips

 Another exciting week of ups and downs!

Weekly progress report

The table below shows the weekly stats for the last 7 weeks on my T212 accounts:

Avoid paying too much tax or too little tax on Accumulating ETFs (UK, Austria, Denmark, Switzerland)?

Accumulating ETFs don't pay out dividends, so you don't pay dividend tax on them - right?

Uhh - WRONG! - you may still need to declare and pay dividend tax each year to the tax man!

If you are a tax resident in Austria, Denmark, Switzerland or the UK you may be paying too much tax or not enough tax on your ETFs! Not only that, but you are probably not declaring your income correctly and you could wind up in trouble with the tax man (or tax woman)!

Does this apply to you?

Trading 212 Update 2025-10-17 - Trump's black Friday

Another exciting week!

I did some day trading by selling some shares that were dropping and then re-buying them at the bottom. I also have 5K in cash now.

Weekly progress report

The table below shows the weekly stats for the last six weeks on my T212 accounts:

My SMR Pie is up 20% in two weeks!

It seems the Nuclear SMR industry is now flavour of the month.

People are beginning to realise that wind and solar are not going to solve the energy crisis, it is more expensive than fossil fuels and too much wind and solar can actually destabilise the grid!

The world needs more electricity. Massive AI and Data centers need Gigawatts of power 24x7 and they need their own source of power.

The (only) viable answer we have left is to generate heat to drive good ol' steam turbines by using nuclear fission.  Since large reactors take about 10-15 years to plan and build, big companies and governments are looking to SMRs to save the day (see my previous article 'Investing in SMRs').

For anyone who wants to get to the truth about green energy and Net Zero - see this video (and others by Kathryn Porter)...

Final report on The Great Currency Hedge Experiment (2025-10-13)

Eight weeks ago on Monday 18th August I bought £50 worth of shares in 10 various hedged and unhedged ETFs.

The idea was to study what the real-world effect of holding currency-hedged ETFs is, when compared to holding unhedged equivalents. I also bought my favourite FTSE 100 RAFI ETF PSRU to compare this UK ETF with US ETFs just for fun.

Here are the 10 ETFs listed in order of descending unrealised gain after 8 weeks (ETF currency shown) - actual profit after selling in last column.

Trading 212 Update 2025-10-10 - Trump strikes again + tips!

Typical! - Just when it was looking like a bumper week, Trump sends out an X tweet at around 4 p.m. BST and the whole stock market dives!

Here is the picture for my T212 ISA after the dust settled on the morning of Saturday 11th (today). Some after-hours trading saw a slight uptick and a few more green squares started to appear late on in Friday's market...

UK Government are not committed to Rolls-Royce SMRs... yet!

Starmer has already signed deals with the USA for US SMRs to be built in the UK.

Many people think that Rolls-Royce RR SMRs will be built in the UK and elsewhere, and so they are investing in RR shares. However, this document is asking for justification on the use of RR SMRs in the UK although it seems US SMRs are already going ahead in the UK.

UK Government spends £860m on air-source heat pump grants!

The UK gov. is spending £860m on decarbonisation projects. Most of this money is being spent on replacing perfectly good gas boilers in public buildings with air-source heat pumps.

207 public sector organisations have been awarded grants for 245 heat decarbonisation and energy efficiency projects.

Trading 212 Update 2025-10-03 + more tips

This week has shown a very nice uptick. 

The table below shows the weekly stats for the last four weeks on my T212 accounts:

T212 Accounts

Deposit  Age      12 Sept.  19 Sept.  26 Sept. 03 Oct   Result(wk) (IRR since start)      

£20,000   6 mths  £24,700   £25,083   £24,619  £25,225  £631       (27% - 20k lump sum in April)

£70,000  14 mths  £76,474   £78,574   £78,415  £80,057  £1,698     (45% - DCA in chunks - 26k added Aug.)

Overall gain this week is +£2,329 (last week was -£622).

So my £90K T212 accounts (£20k ISA + £70K GIA) now total £105K (+£15,282 gain).

Top performers this week...

2025-10-02 Todays Stock risers

Stock market is up @ midday today 12:00 BST UK.

Of note are Ashtead Technology AT (8%), AMD 3.35%, COINbase (2%), ASML (3.6%), CoreWeave CRWV (2.7%) plus many others in the 1%-2% range.

Thales HO (defense company) is up 23% in 1 month, Siemens Energy ENR is up 11% in last week.

Nebius Group NV NBIS on NASDAQ is up 5% today and 78% in the last month due to a large deal with Microsoft...

Buy and Forget - a simple two ETF portfolio!

Many people would like to invest for 5 years or more but do not want to actively trade - they just want to invest a lump sum (and maybe add to it every month or 3 months).

Many years ago I decided to entrust an inheritance to Fisher Investments. They have an annual charge of approx. 1.5%/yr and there is also an initial on-boarding fee for life planning, etc. Fisher very much believe that, provided you have other means of support (e.g. adequate pension and you own your own house), 100% equity investment is best (no bonds or cash). Their fund is basically the same as the SWDA MSCI Core Global ETF but with a few tweaks depending on the current economic climate. For instance, because of Trump's election, they increased their portfolio weighting of European stocks.

As you can see from the charts below, Fisher's fund (Purisima Global Total Return B - shaded blue line) has basically followed the SWDA ETF.

Free investment resource + tips

HelloStocks provide a free list of potentially good investment holdings here.

I cannot vouch for their accuracy or integrity, but it does seem to provide lists of companies suitable for investment depending upon different criteria.

P.S. I have added some extra companies to my 'nuclear' blog article here - see the 'Other possible candidates' section. Some of these have shown +400% and +600% gain in the last year! I have made an 'SMR Pie' in Trading 212 and invested in most of these for the long term as I foresee a desperate need for large amounts of electricity to supply AI and data farms as well as EVs in the next 10 years. In 2027, some SMRs should finally be working and demonstrating their cost effectiveness and efficiency. More SMRs will follow. There will be a need for Uranium and the special fuels that are needed, so no matter which SMR designs win the race, the companies supplying and making the fuel will rocket in value as demand will exceed supply - at least that's my theory!

Trading 212 Update 2025-09-27 + tips

This week has been down overall for me. The first few days started well but there was a small correction on Thursday and Friday.

T212 Accounts

Deposit     Age       12 Sept.   19 Sept.   26 Sept.     Results(week) (IRR since start)      

£20,000    6mnths     £24,700    £25,083    £24,619      -£463         (24% - 20k lump sum in April)

£70,000    14mnths    £76,474    £78,574    £78,415      -£159         (37% - DCA in chunks - 26k added Aug.)

Overall loss this week -£622.

Trading 212 update 2025-09-20 + tips

What a week! After the Fed 0.25% rate cut announcement on Wednesday which everyone was expecting, US shares started to gain (Fed indicated two possible further 25 bps cuts before end of year). Nvidia announced a $5billion investment in Intel and the USD/GBP rate fell 1.5% from 1.36 to 1.34 which also increased the value of US stocks for UK investors.

Is Pawn good for you?

It is projected that the cost of living in the U.S. is projected to continue its upward trend in 2026 and 2027, with the US Consumer Price Index (CPI) expected to reach approximately 333.85 and 341.87 points, respectively, according to Trading Economics. In the UK, it is expected to peak in early 2026 and then very slowly decline.

During these times, credit lenders such as banks, buy-now-pay-later companies like Klarna, credit card companies, discount stores (BME, etc.) can all do well.

A previous favourite of mine had been the pawn shop business H&T Group plc (HAT). I look at buying shares in this company during recessions and when the gold price was high because many people would pawn their gold jewelry and as the value of gold went up, the value of their stock would go up too.