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.

$USD begins to strengthen + my early progress report on hot share tips

My portfolios went down by 1-2% over the last few days despite the S&P 500 being at an all-time high. The dip was due to the weakening $USD. However, today (Thursday 18th Sept.) it seems to be gaining strength and both T212 portfolios have bounced back up again.

The Fx change however, did mean that I could buy more with my £GBP on Tuesday and Wednesday.

Investing in Nuclear SMRs - get in now before it is too late!

Introduction

The world needs green electricity - especially electricity that does not depend on the weather (i.e. neither wind nor solar). Unlike the USA, who are drilling for oil and gas with no regard for global warming, the UK have adopted a Net Zero policy.

In November 2024, the UK and 30 other countries signed a global pledge to triple their nuclear capacity by 2050.

I couldn't make this up - soon you may be able to invest in Trump ETFs!

I am not making this up - honest. Here's the timeline of events in Lalaland the USA.

Why cash is not king for investors!

Around 17th February 2025, Tech shares began to fall. Some people were afraid that the over-priced tech. bubble was finally popping. Others were reacting to the Trump effect and USA instability.

Some investors feared the worst and sold up and converted their portfolios to cash or bonds - especially those with portfolios in tax free wrappers such as ISAs or SIPPs.

Is Defense a good area for investment just now?

Russia has sent drones over NATO (Poland) territory. This has caused some concern amongst the West.

Oana Lungescu, a fellow at the Royal United Services Institute think tank and a former NATO spokesperson, said NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte "has said that NATO needs a five-fold increase in air and missile defense capabilities, so that’s an urgent priority. It’s also important that all NATO countries clarify their national legislation about downing aircraft entering their airspace."

Defense stocks and shares had increased in price over the last 8 months due to the Ukraine/Russian war, but this latest incident has shown that more spending on defense (from drones) is immediately required.

Trading 212 Portfolio Update 2025-09-13

Here is a status report of my two Trading 212 accounts which have performed very well this week (it probably won't last :-( ).

• My £20K ISA account was opened on April 7 2025 with a £20K lump sum.
• My £70K GIA Invest account was opened with £1K in Feb 2024, by June 2025 I had deposited £40K, July 2025 £60K and by Sept. 2025 £70K

Note: I have other SIPP, ISA and GIA accounts which I tend not to touch and only look at occasionally. These comprise of safer, longer term ETFs such as HMWS, XLKQ, IUCM, IITU, EQGB and Artemis Global Income Fund. I use my Trading 212 accounts for more active trading as they have a great app. and web site and very useful search/research features plus alerts, etc. They make investing fun!

I have been investing for over 20 years and have made many mistakes along the way!

My philosophy for these two Trading 212 accounts is to have some fun but never make a large loss by taking big risks. If I buy risky/volatile stocks, it will only be in small amounts that would not seriously harm my whole portfolio. That is why I have 40-50 holdings in each account. Using a wide diversity of stock types is thus spreading the risk. That is why I do not invest large amounts in such trendy, highly tipped companies like FuboTV, HIVE, Crowdstrike, Vertiv, Fortinet, etc. Large losses can seriously affect portfolio performances.

Just use THIS LINK to sign up and get Trading 212 free shares once you have put some money into your account. I will also get some free shares too :-)

Trendy shares (good performers but volatile!)

Scorchio!

I list below some shares and ETFs that have been appearing a lot in many YouTube investor videos.

Most have shown amazing gains so far, but of course they could descend into the depths of Hades at any moment, so beware! Many are purely sentiment driven.

The ones listed below are all ones I hold and most (but not all) are showing me a nice gain so far.

Please do your own research on them and if you decide to buy any, please buy at a good price and remember to take profits before they collapse.

The market at the moment seems to be high, so maybe wait a while?

I will list each one with the 3 month and 1 year performance percentages in parentheses.

How to cash in on the new weight loss obesity drugs

Two of my friends here in the UK who were overweight and pre-diabetic have started to take weight loss drugs.

They were not on an NHS prescription however and it had to be paid for out of their own pocket. Each were paying over £200 a month but the results have proved remarkable. Both women have lost weight and look so much healthier, happier and more attractive! Clearly, these drugs advertise themselves!

This, of course, means that the potential for the success of these drugs is enormous, for both women and men.

Couple this with the fact that as soon as you stop taking the drug, you start eating for two and the weight piles on again, and so we have a drug habit as expensive as tobacco but it is all profit with no tax!

Gold and Silver stock tips today!

Clive Thompson is a retired professional investor who has a YouTube channel that gives investing information and tips.

He says he has learnt of large transactions which are about to take place in a week or so by a large ETF company that is disposing of a large amount of stocks and buying other gold and silver stocks instead.

Get up to £100 of Free shares!

Anyone in the UK who has not already opened a Stocks and Shares ISA must be crazy! Lol :-)

Trading 212 offer a free account (no charges except a very small Foreign Exchange rate charge if you buy non-GBP shares). You can buy fractional shares (so you can buy shares even if you only have £5 a month to invest) and because the ISA is flexible, you can take out all your money from the ISA (tax free) at any time and as long as you put it back in before the end of the tax year (April 5th 2026), anything you put back in is still tax free. You don't need to tell the tax man about your ISA or any profit you make inside your ISA - it is all tax free!

UK Stock up 16% this last week - Manolete partners (MANO)

Manolete Partners are an insolvency litigation financing company who were listed on the AIM market in 2008 and has risen 38% in the last month and 16% in the last week. Manolete work for, and alongside, HMRC, the Insolvency Service, the British Business Bank and the many hundreds of outstanding private sector insolvency practitioners and insolvency and restructuring lawyers.

The recent share price increase is presumably due to recent cases which they have on-boarded and funded. Their 2024 net profit was 3%.

The best investing advice you can get!

I have been investing in Stocks and Shares for over 20 years, starting with ISAs and then with General (taxable) Investment Accounts (GIAs) and then I also started a SIPP.

Over those 20 years, I have made all the mistakes possible:

Broadcom shows sharp price rise today!

Broadcom (AVGO) often appears in the top 10 tech stocks lists but yet seems to be mainly ignored by most retail investors. It has shown a massive gain of over 100% in just 1 year.

This morning (pre-market UK) it seems to be rocketing up 10% so far today, so I have bought in...

More risky share tips!

Last week I bought a few 'risky' shares/ETFs inside my ISA. Yesterday the whole market was down, but when the UK market opened this morning, it was looking better.

First, I have bought £1000 of  the NASDAQ 100 x3 long QQQ3 this morning as I notice that EQGB, XLKQ and IITU are all up this morning (probably due to Alphabet/Google).

Then I checked on my recent smaller mining holdings which are also up today:

Cheapest UK S&S ISA provider + my Top Secret Stock Picking Tool!

In the UK, the cheapest Stocks and Shares providers are Trading 212 and Invest Engine, however they do not provide all types of accounts (e.g. SIPPs, LISAs) and do not allow purchase of mutual funds (e.g. my current favourite fund - Artemis Global Income Fund).

Some brokerage providers do not offer Flexible ISAs and have quite high trading charges.

A new online tool (under development) is here. It is not yet entirely accurate, but you can view the source data here and check each brokers T&Cs. For instance I have an Interactive Investor account and the charges are shown incorrectly by this online tool, they are actually:

Is Ashtead Technology a good buy?

One of the YouTube channels I follow is that of the Geordie Pig Investor. He used to be very strongly into UK Dividend paying companies, but has since seen the light and has started to strengthen his portfolio with USA and global accumulating ETFs.

In normal times, I would buy mainly World ETFs and US Tech ETFs, but I think the USA is heading for a money-printing phase next year and weakening dollar. The Trump effect has made me cautious.

So I have been looking for a good UK company like RR to invest in and Geordie Pig's pick of Ashtead Technology seems like a bargain to me, especially as it has just gone ex-dividend this month and so its low price should rise again before the next 6-monthly dividend payout in early Jan 2026. His video is below. The shares should be moving out of the AIM market on October 6th and although this will be priced in, it may see greater upwards movement when it hits the London market.

HIVE is still looking strong (+ other progress reports)

Hive is still looking good...

I have also taken some small positions on a few other 'chancers' recently too...

I just sold all my Bitcoin (+ are UK CGT rates about to go up?)!

I have held a small amount of crypto via Coinbase for many years. 

I originally started a Coinbase account because some of my users wanted to make a donation in crypto in gratitude for my free RMPrepUSB and Easy2Boot software.

Donations were usually quite small, but over a period of a few years, it probably added up to about £100. I experimented with this as it grew in value and bought £600 Ethereum with it as it grew in value. A few years ago, I then converted it all back into Bitcoin and this week I decided to cash it all in for about £1200. I am just not convinced Bitcoin or crypto is going anywhere - after all it has had plenty of opportunity. Stablecoins are another offshoot, but the infrastructure costs of maintaining a global blockchain and transaction costs don't seem to live up to the promises. If they did, then the finance companies would be adopting crypto like crazy.

Cashing in my Bitcoin means I have crystallised a taxable capital gain of approx. £600. The Coinbase fee for the conversion to cash and withdrawal was over £20. So much for crypto transactions being cheap (1.66%)!

What to buy with £1200?

This leaves me with the problem of what to buy with the 'free' money.

Where to invest - USA, UK FTSE or EU?

The USA market is looking very volatile at the moment. It is not clear whether USA $ index ETFs are a good investment right now, compared to the UK or Europe (or even other areas such as Japan, etc.).

US stocks have fallen for five days running as traders nervously await a speech from Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell.

I use my GIA accounts for safer, less volatile, longer term investing. In these GIA accounts I hold HMWS, EQGB, XLKQ and IUCM (the first MSCI all world containing approx. 60% US companies and the last three almost 100% US companies). So long-term, I am very Tech biased and thus USA biased.

However, in my £20K ISA account on Trading 212, I have a lot of fingers in a lot of pies as I like to short-term and mid-term trade within this account because any gains within my ISA will not trigger any CGT when sold. 

       



This morning's T212 ISA mix is quite a mess at the moment (IRR 13%) as I am top-slicing many of the larger holdings in order to hold cash, ready to buy on the forthcoming dip.

The promise of AI seems to have been oversold as far as I can see. The chip producers and AI software companies seem to have over promised. AI will benefit certain service sectors and finance sectors however, especially anyone who uses a large number of real live humans for support services, etc.

Another complication is the weak $Dollar rate vs the UK £GBP or EU €Euro. I am avoiding any risk by opting for currency hedged ETFs (e.g. EQGB instead of EQQQ).

The 3-month chart below shows how the $Dollar rate has affected gains on index funds for UK investors:

Stock tip: HIVE is looking good.

I bought HIVE recently and it is showing encouraging signs.

Maybe one to consider?

--- oOo ---

P.S. 10/10/2025 - over the past few months I traded HIVE about 4 times (max £1000) and made about £600. If I had just held, I would have made more (x2) but I like to take profits when available!

The great Hedging Experiment (To Hedge or Not To Hedge - that is the question)!

You will see many YouTube videos which continually tell you how important it is to buy the index ETF which has the lowest TER rate.

The TER is the hidden rate that you are charged. It is the cost of owning the ETF. Differences between different providers are usually very small. For instance the benchmark World ETF SWDA has a TER of 0.20% but the identical ETF HMWS has a TER of 0.15%.

Over 3 years, the gain of these two ETFs were:

SWDA   37.28%  (TER 0.20%)

HMWS  37.83%  (TER 0.15%)

So £10,000 invested for 3 years would give us approx. £78 more if we chose HMWS instead of SWDA.

However, we often have another choice to make when deciding which index ETF to buy and that is whether to buy a currency hedged or unhedged ETF.

Ventoy 1.1.07 now released

 Ventoy 1.1.07 is now available from the Ventoy website. Download here.

If you have added the Ventoy image files to your E2B drive, you can update them by clicking on the Make_Latest_Ventoy_Partition_Image.cmd script which is located on the 2nd partition of the E2B drive in the \e2b\Update agFM folder.

Note that the integrated and modified Ventoy For Easy2Boot is still version 1.0.97 of Ventoy.

New IODD Mini Pro (no more E2B\Ventoy Secure Boot and WinPE issues!)

IODD have just released the new IODD Mini Pro which has a USB 3.1Type C USB connector and improved firmware.

'.RMD' is used for removable media devices, '.VHD' for fixed devices

The Mini Pro is available in capacities of 512GB ($149), 1TB ($185) and 2TB ($248).

Key Changes to the IODD MINI PRO:

New Interface: The adoption of a USB-C type port has significantly

improved its versatility and convenience.

Expanded Storage: It now supports 80mm M.2 SSDs, a change from the

previous 42mm, allowing for a wider variety of capacities and models.

Effective Heat Control: We’ve applied new materials to effectively

reduce heat, ensuring stable performance even during extended use.

Enhanced Security: The encryption password length has been increased

from a maximum of 16 to 76 digits, making security even more robust.

I found an amazing new managed Global fund (37% gain in a year, 150% in five years)!

Back in April 2023, I decided to add an actively managed fund to my portfolio. I chose the Royal London Global Equity Select Fund (Acc) and for 2023 and early 2024 it  proved to be a good choice.

However, the fund manager and  it's Alpha managers left Royal London in April 2024 and since then the performance of this fund has been disappointing to say the least (4% vs. 11% for a benchmark global equity fund)...

Fix for WinPE ISOs (e.g. Ankh Tech WinPE) not fully working from agFM menu system

You may find that some WinPE ISOs boot to the WinPE Desktop OK, but some Desktop icons may be missing or not functional or some shortcuts report a 'Drive Y: not found' error message.

The problem is that many WinPE ISOs are actually designed to be extracted onto a USB drive and not actually booted from an ISO file. In some cases the WinPE startup files may look for the ISO on a drive (so it can mount it as drive Y:) but may not find it.

For instance the Ankh Tech WinPE ISOs an Easy2Boot USB drive may work OK if you legacy boot (and add a _.isope01 suffix to the filename) in legacy BIOS boot mode from the E2B menu system or if using the Ventoy menu, but if Legacy or UEFI booting to the agFM menu, the WinPE ISO may boot OK, but some Desktop and Start Menu items in WinPE may not run.

Another recent share purchase - Comfort Systems (FIX)

I have recently bought shares in Comfort Systems (FIX) on Trading 212 for £500...

Time to switch to unhedged ETFs for UK/EU investors (EQQQ vs EQGB)?

Generally, there is not much difference between hedged and unhedged ETFs for UK investors over the long term, however due to the weakening dollar to GBP rate, instead of buying the Nasdaq 100 ETF EQQQ, I have been buying the hedged ETF version EQGB (which has a higher TER of 0.35% compared to 0.30%) because the performance difference has been quite marked.

In the above chart, we see the hedged EQGB has massively outperformed the unhedged EQQQ so far this year. Almost a 9% difference in the last 6 months is quite a difference!

However, if we look at the performance over just the last month, I can see that the unhedged ETF EQQQ has shown a return of 4.86% vs. 4.04% of EQGB.