This week's share tips

Vertiv, which I already hold, has shown a promising 16% gain in the last week.

FuboTV (FUBO) is at last looking better with a 12% gain in the last week (24% in last 3 months).

Robinhood (HOOD) is looking strong but needs to be watched closely today as Q2 results are due at the end of today! 400% gain in a year with reasonably steady chart line.

Fortinet (FTNT) has been stable for 3 months but may jump up depending on Q2 results next Wednesday 6th Aug.

HIMS is rising rapidly as good expected Q2 results on 4th August are anticipated. 

IUCM S&P 500 Communications has Meta, Netflix, Alphabet, Disney and telco companies as major holdings is one of my favourite ETFs (I pair with XLKQ) and has not performed as well in the last 6 months as it had the previous 6 months. I have topped up on this $ ETF in the hope of good Q2 results.

AMZN dived in the first 3 months of 2025 due to heavy capital investment and the weakened $, but it now looks to be making a strong recovery.

Classic high flyers PLTR, AMD, NVDA, MSFT, GOOG are being tipped this week, but I prefer to buy via index ETFs such as Nasdaq EQGB or EQQQ and S&P 500 Tech ETFs, etc.

XLKQ/IITU USA Tech and Nasdaq have performed well in last 3 months. 

Note: This is not investment advice - i'm just an average bod on the internet!

New free eBook - Start Investing Now!

I have just written a new FREE eBook (using Apples free iPages online editor on iCloud) and it is now available from my Payhip store as a free PDF file.

The eBook is targeted at potential UK newbie investors who have thought about starting a Stocks and Shares investment ISA or perhaps a SIPP personal pension fund but have given up because they thought it was way too complicated.

In fact, investing is ridiculously easy these days and online brokers such as Trading 212 make it really easy to start.

What shares am I buying next week?

First, I will share that I have crystallised profit and sold a major portion of SOFI. I have been buying more SOFI over the last few weeks, so I sold £5000 for a profit of £421 made in just 3 weeks. Due to the short timescale the Fx hit was only £7. I still have some SOFI shares that I bought for £1000 and they are currently valued at £1516, so that is a 50% unrealised gain so far.

The good news is that the S&P 100 is up 5% this week. I would think it is a good time to buy it or the NASDAQ 100 or US Tech (XLKQ or IITU or IUCM) while the £ has strong buying power.

What have I bought this month (July 3rd - 18th 2025)?

Inflation and investing - will the banks rip us off even more now?

Many people in the UK think that investing is 'risky'. This is true if you invest in a few individual companies, but a global index tracker fund is not risky in the long term - it is just more volatile than a savings account (but far more rewarding!).

Even Government bonds are no longer perceived as entirely risk-free assets - their long-term growth potential is now in doubt if you consider inflation too. 

In this article, I also discuss a UK index ETF that has returned an average of 17% each year over the last 5 years, gives over 4% in dividends each year and did NOT lose you money in 2022!

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:

How to back test your portfolio for free

I have wanted to back test the performance of various portfolios for a while now.

One of the best sites I have found is https://www.portfoliovisualizer.com

You can go to https://www.portfoliovisualizer.com/backtest-portfolio to build and back test several portfolios.

For Europeans, there is also the curvo.eu backtester which I will discuss later.

My ETFs for H2 2025

We are now 6 months into 2025 and it is looking like Trump's devastating tariffs and his 'Big Beautiful Bill' is not going to be allowed to go ahead in it's entirety.

It may be that now is a good time to invest some spare cash that I may hold because it is looking like 'play time' will soon be over and the grown-ups will start to take charge of the USA soon.

Hot Tip: Crypto shares up 200+% in last month!

In the last month, the Bitcoin-oriented share ALTBG (Euro) has gained over 200% to date (11:00 BST 21-May-2025). They went up 168% in the last week!

This company has pledged to buy a large amount of BitCoin and seems to be rocketing. It often has a trading halt on it for a few hours but it is currently trading.

Warning: Marks & Spencer cyber hack - hackers now have all my customer details!

I received this email yesterday from M&S about the 'cyber incident' they suffered recently (although it seems they knew since Feb.2025!). 

It says that criminals have obtained my 'contact details, date of birth and online order history' and goes on to assure me that no usable card or payment details or passwords were obtained.

New Windows 10/11 AutoUnattend.xml generator

E2B, agFM and Ventoy allow you to use an unattend XML file with your Microsoft Window 10/11 ISO. This allows you to specify settings and components for your Windows install as well as semi- or fully-automate the install.

Previously, I have recommended the online Windows Answer File Generator (WAFG) but the site seems to no longer exist...

Legacy Boot with persistence for Kaspersky Rescue Disk ISO 2025 using E2B (grub4dos)

Here is how to get the KRD2025 ISO to legacy boot on E2B with user file persistence and with update file persistence.

1. Download the krd.iso file and save it to \_ISO\LINUX folder as KRD2025.iso.

2. Download the Ventoy pre-made 'backend' persistence files contained within the images.zip and extract ONE of the following persistence files as a .dat file using 7zip. I tried the 2gb one.

How I made 30% in one week from the current market chaos

It is possible to buy an ETN such as £3STP or €3STE which shorts TESLA shares.

The GraniteShares 3x Short Tesla Daily ETP seeks to track the Solactive Daily Leveraged 3x Short Tesla (-3x) index. The Solactive Daily Leveraged 3x Short Tesla (-3x) index tracks the three times leveraged inverse performance of the Tesla share on a daily basis.

The ETN's TER (total expense ratio) amounts to 0.99% p.a.. The ETN replicates the performance of the underlying index synthetically with a swap. The dividends in the ETN are accumulated and reinvested in the ETF.

The GraniteShares 3x Short Tesla Daily ETP is a small ETN with 18m GBP assets under management. The ETN was launched on 29 June 2020 and is domiciled in Ireland.

GraniteShares 3x short TESLA (Ticker 3STE) is an ETN that shorts TESLA by a negative factor of x3.

As long as I have some spare cash, then using a 'short' or 'inverse' fund allows me to hedge my portfolio but without selling any shares in my portfolio.

If you use Trading 212, use the Search page and look for 'Inverse ETFs' in the sidebar under the 'ETFs' heading.

This Euro sector ETF has gone up 30% in just 6 months!

Investors have secretly been moving away from S&P 500 stocks to Euro stocks. The past, excellent performance of the S&P 500 was mainly dependent on Tech stocks and due to recent events in AI and Elon Musk and his buddy DJT, etc. investors now think that Euro stocks have been undervalued in recent years.

Can I build a long-term Global ETF portfolio to rival the S&P 500?

The S&P 500 has historically shown very good and consistent gains, however the USA is proving to be quite a volatile market this year (2025) and so a more widely diversified portfolio would seem a sensible option.

However, investing in the whole global core market - e.g. Core MSCI World (ETF SWDA with 1,300 holdings) gives us diluted performance as it contains over 1000 stocks.

Now in my current portfolio, I have cherry-picked some S&P 500 stocks by using sector S&P 500 ETFs which have shown good performance and which I believe may continue to show good performance, such as:

• Tech - e.g. IITU or XLKQ
• Communications - e.g. IUCM
• Commodities - e.g. COMM
• Finance - e.g. IUFS
• Consumer - e.g. IUCD
• Utilities - e.g. IUSU

But what if I build a portfolio based on these sectors but using specially selected global market shares instead?

Easy2Boot 2.21 released

I uploaded a new version of E2B yesterday.

Very little has changed. The main thing was to test for the presence of wmic.exe in your Windows filesystem because new installations of Windows 11 will no longer have this once standard but now deprecated Windows utility.

Wmic.exe can be added into Windows 11 using the Optional Features option...

A new Windows 11 installation may not include the WMIC utility by default. See here

Add WMIC using: Windows 11 – Settings (Winkey+I) – Apps – Optional Features – View Features – WMIC – Install
A Windows restart/reboot my be required after installing WMIC.

Raindrops on roses... (a few of my favourite ETFs)

Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens 

Bright copper kettles and warm woolen mittens

Brown paper packages tied up with strings

These are a few of my favorite things [ETFs]

I do use a small part of my investment portfolio to buy individual company stocks like NVidia or Amazon or Tower Resources (big fail!), but as I am no expert in company analysis, I tend to only break even with these at the best of times! The problem is always when one stock dives significantly - I have learnt that slow and steady is better than risking any significant loss in just one stock as it takes ages to recover from that loss.

Index ETFs on the other hand will never go down to zero and usually tend to go up or at least keep pace with inflation.

The only exception is if I (stupidly) buy a very risky stock. In this case, I will buy it inside my GIA account so that if I make a loss, I can deduct that loss from my total gains and thus pay less CGT. If it makes a large gain, then I don't mind paying the CGT! On the other hand, if I held it inside my ISA and I lost 90% of it, I cannot even make use of that loss and it will take months to get that money back from my other investments. Trading outside of an ISA does sometimes have an advantage in that you can deduct that loss from your gains.

The ETFs I have listed below are my current favourites.

My ratio of holdings in these however will vary depending on the current stock market climate.

My favourite ETFs, ordered by fund size.

I tend to not sell ETFs such as SWDA, XDEQ, XLKQ, HMWS, CSP1 and EQQQ, and so I hold these in my SIPP and GIA accounts and don't sell them so as not to incur capital gains tax.

Tech stocks down today by 6% - here's what I am doing (27-Jan-2025)

The recent news that the latest open source release on GitHub of Chinese-based DeepSeek (equiv. to ChatGPT, OpenAI, etc.) is supposedly 95% cheaper than current US solutions using high-end nVidia chips.

Others are saying it gives a x30 performance improvement, taking much less time to teach it and less power to run it.

The stock market (S&P, Tech) is panicking as there certainly does seem to be some truth to the claims.

S&P 500 (2025-01-27)

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:

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.

How to invest in Crypto?

Many people are tempted to trade in the cryptocurrency sector.

You could just buy some crypto currency such as Bitcoin or Ethereum from a broker such a Coinbase (COIN) or CRYPTO for Bitcoin. You need to also bear in mind that any crystallised gains made on a sell transaction of cryptocurrency may be a taxable event (e.g. Capital Gains Tax in the UK) and should be declared. Coinbase will inform HMRC of any large crypto inflows (I think around £5k+/yr going into crypto assets).

Many people invest in MicroStrategy (Nasdaq:MSTR) which loosely follows Bitcoin's performance (though you would be hard pressed to know what it does from the description!). MSTR uses investors money to buy Bitcoin and they will own approx. 4% of all Bitcoins soon. However, the share price has gained x4 more this year than Bitcoin has! It seems mad to me! It can be bought inside a ISA or SIPP unlike bitcoins or Ethereum, and so is popular with crypto investors.

There is also LON:ARB and Coinbase (COIN):

Another alternative is to buy a crypto ETF such as VanEck Crypto and Blockchain Innovators UCITS ETF (DAPP/DAGB). This can be bought within an ISA and thus gains are free of all tax.

The VanEck Crypto and Blockchain Innovators UCITS ETF seeks to track the MVIS Global Digital Assets Equity index. The MVIS Global Digital Assets Equity index tracks companies from around the world that are active in the blockchain industry.

 

The ETF's TER (total expense ratio) amounts to 0.65% p.a.. The VanEck Crypto and Blockchain Innovators UCITS ETF is the only ETF that tracks the MVIS Global Digital Assets Equity index. The ETF replicates the performance of the underlying index by full replication (buying all the index constituents). The dividends in the ETF are accumulated and reinvested in the ETF.

 

The VanEck Crypto and Blockchain Innovators UCITS ETF has 233m GBP assets under management. The ETF was launched on 30 April 2021 and is domiciled in Ireland.

I have added a few ETFs below from Justetf.com. The 'Trump effect' around Nov 4th is easy to see:

Trump Trades (stocks to buy now)

Trump stocks sectors that should show good performance in next 2 years are (with example ETFs):

• Crypto - e.g. DAPP, BLKC, CRYPTO
• Finance - e.g. IUFS 
• Industry (esp. Tech and Tesla) - e.g. IUSU, IITU or XLKQ, IUCM
• Oil/Energy - e.g. IESU
• Defense - e.g. DFNS  
• S&P 500 and Nasdaq - e.g. EQQQ, HSPA

Personally, of these, I am just investing in only some of them: EQQQ, IUFS, IUSU, IITU, IUCM and also some IESU (2%).

The Trump effect (and what should I buy now?)

My core ETFs (80+% of portfolio) over the last 6 months to 1 year have been (in descending order of value):

• SWDA MSCI Global ETF
• XDEQ World Quality Factor ETF (may change to XDEM soon as includes financials)
• Royal London Global Equity
• XLKQ Xtrackers MSCI World Quality ETF (better perf. at 46% than SWDA 26%, XDEQ 25%, EQQQ 30%, XDEM 31% in last year!)
• IITU    iShares S&P 500 Info Tech Sect ETF GBP
• IUCM iShares S&P 500 Comm Sect ETF USD
• IUFS   iShares S&P 500 Financial ETF USD
• EQQQ Invesco NASDAQ 100 (I will be increasing this soon)

Following the USA election results, the 'Trump effect' has given all of these a boost of between 2%-5% in the last few days.

My core ETFs

Should you keep your emergency 'cash pot' inside a Flexible ISA?

In the UK, we can put up to £20K into a tax-free ISAs each year and any capital gains are completely tax free.

Emergency cash pot

Many people (and particularly the self-employed) will have an emergency 'cash pot' which they can withdraw cash from should an emergency arise, such as if being unable to work due to accident or health, loss of job, unforeseen expenses, etc. 

If you need to withdraw funds (e.g. due to temporary loss of income) it is best to withdraw from your emergency cash pot which typically holds at least 3-6 months of income rather than sell your high-gain stocks/ETFs and be out of the market.

Unless you are retired and are drawing a good pension, you may need an emergency pot that is large enough to support you for at least 6 months or so, especially if you don't have any other 'cash' resources.

This pot should not be invested in volatile assets because it needs to be available at all times - if you invested it in the S&P500 and the stock market went down 50% just when you needed the cash, you would only have half the emergency funds you thought you had!

When the s*it hits the fan...

Should you pick a currency-hedged ETF if you don't live in the USA?

Some ETFs are 'hedged'. This usually means they are currency-hedged.

Currency-hedged ETFs are designed to protect investors from currency risk. They are a simple, cheap and effective way for small investors to access currency management techniques that were once the preserve of major financial institutions.  

Currency risk affects you negatively when your home currency strengthens against a foreign currency – reducing the value of your assets held in that foreign currency. That means UK based investors are exposed to currency risk on all non-hedged ETFs that trade in overseas securities.  

Currency-hedged ETFs are useful because they remove the uncertainty of exchange rate fluctuations. They sterilise your portfolio against the effect of currency so that your overseas investment doesn’t gain when the pound falls or lose when the pound rises.  

Let us look at the US Dollar versus the GB Pound.

This Android phone tip may save you $THOUSANDS one day!

So picture this - you have an android phone (e.g. android 14 or 15) and you are happily using it in your favourite pub or eating house. You are checking your emails, reading Reddit, playing a game, talking to someone or reading a text message - just the usual stuff.

So, of course, at this precise moment your phone is unlocked simply because you are using it.

You have taken the precaution set up a SIM card PIN however, so that even if someone steals your locked phone and puts your SIM card into their own unlocked phone, they will not be able to steal from you by using your phone number to receive SMS password reset messages or call premium rate numbers. You think you are pretty safe...

But now, all of a sudden, someone snatches your phone out of your hand and since they now have your unlocked phone, they can easily access your SMS messages and emails. This means they can now reset your bank PINs and email passwords which then locks you out of your own accounts and gives them full access instead of you! Google will helpfully fill in any of your passwords! Two factor authentication is not a problem because the second factor is your phone!

Best long-term ETFs for UK investors (and retire with £3 million)!

If you just want to invest in the stock market, say with £100 each and every month (called 'dollar cost averaging') automatically taken from your bank account a few days after your pay day, what ETFs should you buy?

US investors, including the famous Warren Buffet, say to just invest in the S&P 500 but UK investors may also want to diversify outside US stocks because we are affected by foreign exchange rates as well as a 15% dividend withholding tax applied to US dividends.

However, US stocks have performed much better than UK or even EU stocks, even allowing for exchange rates and foreign taxes, so we have a difficult decision.

Generate autounattend.xml files for Windows 10/11

You may be familiar with https://www.windowsafg.com/ which helps you to generate unattend.xml file to automate Windows installations. Easy2Boot also includes a utility XMLtoE2B which can be used with WAFG.

There is also a site at https://schneegans.de/windows/unattend-generator/ which you may find useful.

These can be useful if you are installing Windows using Ventoy or Easy2Boot.

My eBook sale was 'hacked'! (only 3 days left!)

My eBook sale has only 3 days left.

You can get between 15% and 25% off with multibuys, however, some enterprising customers seem to have been able to get 30% off by combining multiple discount offers!

Store

If you found my eBooks useful, why not get another before it is too late?

My shop front is here,

P.S. If you like the idea of earning income from a side hustle, why not get my 'How to make $1000 a month from the internet' eBook!  - recently updated to v1.10. If you think you can write and sell eBooks or have a product or business idea, this eBook should save you a lot of time and prevent you from losing money! My own real and truthful sales figures are included + useful hints and tips on how to get started, etc, Surely that is worth a few $ ;=(

Here is an example of how to set up a simple website to sell Digital Products by Hostinger, but read my eBook for hundreds of tips and Gotcha's first!

Are Dividend ETFs performing better than other ETFs?

The last 6 months have been rather weak for Tech ETFs such as IITU and even Global tracker ETFs like the benchmark SWDA.

I see that dividend ETFs show better performance as well as paying dividends.

It expected that we will continue to see volatility during October/November 2024, so it may be better to switch some funds into dividend and value ETFs during this period.

The table below shows some of the best ETFs available in the UK and for comparison IITU and SWDA. Some Dividend ETFs are accumulating funds and some pay dividends.

A 6-month chart is shown below: