RMPrepUSB, Easy2Boot and USB booting

Will AI Data Centres fail us?

2026-06-25T12:26:40.146+01:00

AI companies seem to be the tech darling still - but will it last if they are not profitable and they cannot be connected up to a 24x7 supply of electrickery?Are we (the retail share market) being asked to fund AI because they are short of capital but must expand to survive even though they have not defined a way to be profitable until at least 2028? What use are AI data centres if only a

Ramsdens (RFX) agrees to GBP203 Million takeover by FirstCash

2026-06-23T10:48:15.398+01:00

I had posted a few blog articles on buying pawn brokers Ramsdens and FirstCash because these businesses usually do well when the gold price is high and times are hard (people need cash quickly).Is Pawn good for you - 19th Sept 2025Invest in Pawn (gold) - 23rd January 2026and told you I bought £500 of RFX in my 23rd May 2026 blogRamsdens has just shot up 30% due to the news that FirstCash is

Trading 212 £193k portfolio update + tips

2026-06-20T14:16:39.814+01:00

A great week for my Trading 212 portfolio, gaining over £10k in a week!£140k deposited over 2 years shows a £53k uncrystallised profitThe Hormuz 'memorandum of misunderstanding' helped a lot, and also the US stock market being closed on Friday helped too!I have set up stop sells on many of my ISA stocks so that should the market fall on Monday, I will try crystalise my profit. I will buy

Investing in SpaceX via Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust (SMT)

2026-06-15T13:21:30.494+01:00

Instead of buying SpaceX, I invested in the Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust fund SMT.My SMT holding bought mid-April 2026.SMT had an approx. 20% stake in SpaceX as a private company before the SpaceX IPO.SMT's PortfolioThe Baillie Gifford flagship trust currently holds roughly 63% in public equities and 37% to 41% in unlisted private companies. Its top ten holdings make up

Swing trading is easy (in hindsight) but here is how ChatGPT can help!

2026-06-14T11:46:21.433+01:00

I opened an ISA on Trading 212 and put £20k in it in April 2025 and started buying stocks. I bought a mixture of individual companies and ETFs. I tried to chase trending stocks. The idea was to use my ISA for more risky stocks which had a higher potential gain (or loss!). In April 2026 I added another £20k and bought more shares.To date, my T212 ISA has had £40k deposits in 14 months, is at £

Trading 212 184k portfolio update

2026-06-13T10:38:07.796+01:00

After a disastrous Friday last week, my portfolio has climbed back a bit.I had some uninvested cash in my T212 accounts, so I took the market dip as a buying opportunity and nearly all £140k of my deposits are now invested.My all time high was £191k, so my portfolio has not quite fully recovered.My purchases at the beginning of the week to pick up 'cheap' stocks

Trading 212 179k portfolio update 2026-06-05

2026-06-07T10:19:14.897+01:00

We saw a rapid drop on Friday 5th June 2026 for Tech. stocks including CPU and memory companies. At the end of last week (end May), my portfolio was at £189k so it has lost £10k.I had set some limit buys and stop losses and most of them triggered. I don't normally do that because it lets the broker (or their agent) see my limits and deliberately stop me out, but this week, because of the insane

The rise of AI and what shares to buy next (Dell, HP, Lenovo, etc.)

2026-06-02T12:50:05.038+01:00

On the 30th May I tipped various companies including HP, Dell, etc.I put some limit buys on Trading 212 and managed to pick up HPE for $43. On June 1st it shot up and is now at $59.Hewlett Packard Enterprise reports record second-quarter results and accelerates its long-term financial goals by two years, underscored by solid demand for artificial intelligence data centers, while Google-owner

How to get $Billions for the NHS instead of us paying $Billions!

2026-06-01T10:33:33.941+01:00

MPs are currently deciding about a single patient record and are talking about improving GP and Hospital access via combining digital records.There are concerns over data safety, but what they are not talking about is the value of this data (perhaps deliberately?).The fact is that the health records of all the population (past and present) of population of 50+ million first-world people is worth

UKCGT.xyz capital gains calculator now supports Freetrade .csv files + StockWatcher page

2026-06-01T09:11:32.017+01:00

I was sent a sample .csv file for Freetrade and asked to include support for it, so this has now been added this morning into v4.10 onwards.Please let me know if you find any issue.StockWatcherYou may have noticed that I have added a StockWatcher tab. This is experimental and under development but feel free to experiment with it - alerts are sent to your mobile phone via a free NTFY service and

Trading 212 £189k portfolio update 2026-05-29 + tips

2026-05-30T12:03:31.705+01:00

A bumper week, mainly due to positive news on the Hormuz Strait.My 1 yr IRRs are 47% (GIA) and 43% (ISA)My all time IRRs (approx 2 yrs) are 95% (GIA) and 55% (ISA)I decided to spend a little of the spare cash I held in the accounts to top up on the following:ServiceNow seemed to be trending (several YT channels were tipping it), so I investigated and then bought £500 inside my ISA and then

Want cheaper AI - use Deepseek!

2026-05-27T17:11:42.138+01:00

After using Codex and ChatGPT 5.5 is was very, very impressed. I subscribed to the Plus model for approx. £17 a month (first month is free).It was wonderful but slow, so I turned up the wick to high performance and before I could finish the tweaks to my project, I had run out of credits! My choices were to wait a week, top up my credit or subscribe to the £100/month plan! I chose to top up by £20

The rise of AI and how to profit from it!

2026-05-23T14:28:05.863+01:00

I have been using ChatGPT 5 with Codex to create html website pages and write scripts for apps - see UKCGT.xyz for an example.I am truly amazed at the 'intelligence' of the system. There were no hallucinations or serious code mangling or reversals. It just worked beautifully. What I did in a few days would have taken me months in the past.I can see why there is so much money pouring into AI, but

Trading 212 £182k Portfolio update 22/05/2026 + tips

2026-05-23T13:33:24.984+01:00

Not much change. The two portfolios went down a lot but then slowly recovered.I topped-up in the Invest account and made a few new buys...and in the ISA, I made a small buy for a Pawn business which should do well due to the gold price, high cost of living and people needing to pay their rent...Current losersHere are my biggest losers in my Invest account. I will hold these and wait for them to

Trading 212 £182k Portfolio progress update 15/05/2026

2026-05-16T13:08:20.651+01:00

It was all going so well until Friday!At the end of Thursday my T212 portfolios totalled £186k and my Invest account reached 100% IRR - but then came Friday...I still cannot complain though as my IRR numbers are still is Invest 86% and ISA 42%.Recent purchasesI have bought these shares recently. My main thought is to buy 'picks and shovels' companies in defence, metals and ARM seemed to be a good

New share capital gains calculator site ukcgt.xyz is born!

2026-05-16T12:28:46.494+01:00

Yesterday, I quickly created a new website at ukcgt.xyz. Since .co.uk and .com were already taken, I went with the .xyz domain as easy2boot.xyz uses it and it was the cheapest!The new Hostinger site uses the same code as the ukcg page on the easy2boot.xyz site. I will put a link on the easy2boot.xyz page to point users to the new site soon.Trading 212 and Interactive Investor .csv files have been

UKCGT - Capital Gains calculator for Trading 212, Barclays, Interactive Investor, LightYear, AJ Bell and cgtcalculator.com files

2026-05-14T11:28:07.190+01:00

In just a matter of a just few more hours, with the help of ChatGPT and Codex, I have made a Capital Gains calculator page on a new website which accepts T212, Barclays, Interactive Investor and some other formats.https://ukcgt.xyzIt has a 'Test' button if you want to try it quickly on a few trades.It should give the same results as the cgtcalculator.com or the UK Tax calculator sites. I have

How I made my 'cgtcalculator.com' converter and web apps using ChatGPT

2026-05-12T17:50:00.040+01:00

I wanted to make a converter utility which would turn a transaction report downloaded from Trading 212 into a format suitable for cgtcalculator.com. Initially I asked ChatGPT to make it in Python, but later I asked it to make an .html page with the script inside it.The initial development of the Python code took about half a day using ChatGPT. The next day I added the html code to my

The HMRC 30-day share matching rule explained

2026-05-09T12:20:00.013+01:00

When calculating capital gains tax, UK investors have to allow for three important HMRC rules which affect the 'cost price' of the shares that you sold. The cost price is important because it is used to calculate the gain or loss...The gain/loss is NET SELL PRICE - NET COST PRICEHMRC Order of Priority

Trading 212 £183k Portfolio progress update 8/05/2026

2026-05-09T10:06:00.005+01:00

Overall I am up £8k this Saturday morning after a very good week due to good tech stock reports this week. Over 300 of the 500 companies in the S&P 500 have now reported their latest quarterly results.Overall, I am now £43k up after 26 months of building up my accounts (£140k total deposits) and they are showing pretty good IRRs. It would be a shame to feel the effects of a market collapse

Save Tax! Don't use your broker's (e.g. Trading 212) annual report to report your Capital Gains Tax to HMRC!

2026-05-04T14:44:00.025+01:00

Trading 212 have one of the best broker platforms and they produce nice monthly and annual tax year statements. Your 2025 tax year statement should be ready now - but you should NOT actually use the Total gains/loss figure in the annual report of your Invest GIA in your HMRC self assessment return.For example, In my Trading 212 - Invest account, I go to Documents - Account Statements

Trading 212 £174k Portfolio progress update 1/05/2026 + tips

2026-05-02T11:31:00.024+01:00

Net deposits on Trading 212 are currently: Invest £100k and ISA 40k (only recently added 20k) so I am £34k up at the moment. Here is the result on this morning of Saturday 2 May 2026:Invest IRR 72% - ISA IRR 31%I still have £4k as cash in the ISA and £10k as cash in the Invest GIA.I took some profits on some holdings (AMD, ARM) in the

Choosing the best Investment Platform for a GIA account (for HMRC tax reporting)

2026-04-25T21:25:00.075+01:00

If you have used up your £20k ISA annual allowance, you may want to open a General Investment Account (GIA) and you need to be aware that these are taxable.Choosing the right GIA platform is important because you cannot easily switch to another platform without triggering a Capital Gain and thus CGT if your gain is over £3k!Each year you will need to consider the following points:You are allowed

Trading 212 £175k Portfolio progress update 17/04/2026

2026-04-19T06:50:00.008+01:00

This week ended with the announcement that Straights of Hormuz would be open and so the market ended well up on Friday. However, over the weekend, we saw that the USA were still blockading the Straights and so the Iranians closed access again. It seems the stock market is very dovish at the moment (except for the oil market where oil prices were still very high - they weren't fooled by the

Trading 212 £169k Portfolio progress update 10/04/2026

2026-04-11T10:08:00.016+01:00

Last week I did some tax loss harvesting and sold £20ks-worth of shares in my T212 Invest GIA account and then after April 6th, I moved that £20k into the T212 ISA.This means I now have £40k deposits in my ISA (£17k still as cash) and £100k deposits in my T212 Invest GIA account. Overall, I have slowly built up my T212 accounts to £169k with £140k of deposits over a period from Feb 2024 onwards.