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.

2026/27 UK Tax changes and how to use your UK Tax allowances

2026-04-06T12:06:00.009+01:00

The main change for this new tax year (2026/2027) is that the Dividend Tax Rate is increasing by 2%. This means that if you have a Stocks and Shares General Investment account (GIA), then whether you have accumulating or distributing ETFs, you will still need to declare taxable income on ETFs and funds which have a non-zero ERI. The dividend tax is now 10.75% for Basic Rate taxpayers (or 35.75%

2025/2026 Tax year Investment Review - how did I do?

2026-04-04T12:42:00.083+01:00

After one year of actively investing and trading on Trading 212, I am now (6/4/2026) reviewing my trades and performance. Of course, my results are much worse today due to the Iran crisis and Trump's threat of genocide - last month my GIA IRR was over 50% rather than the 35% now (P.S. on 8/3/2026 my 1yr IRR is 44% just after Trumps 14-day Iran extension was announced)!£120k Deposit - T212

Investing in the new 2026/2027 tax year

2026-04-03T10:58:00.006+01:00

The Iran war has now brought us a new perspective for consideration.From a macroscopic viewpoint, the USA is energy-rich and is not dependent on the middle East for fossil fuels, unlike the rest of the world (Europe and Asia). DJT has managed to make fossil fuels twice as expensive and he will now walk away to leave us with a mess and potentially an expensive war.The USA may experience a fuel

Last day for Tax Loss Harvesting!

2026-04-01T22:31:00.004+01:00

Thursday April 2nd 2026 is the last trading day of the 2025/2026 tax year in the UK.This is the day to sell any stocks in your GIA invest account which show a loss.Your capital gains allowance is £3k, so if you have made more gains in this tax year than £3k, it makes sense to sell those losing stocks now in order to reduce the year's total capital gains to get as near to 3k as possible.On Tuesday

What to invest in now (March 2026)?

2026-03-17T14:19:00.008+00:00

The world is once again in chaos! The USA and Israel have decided to attack Iran without considering the impact on the rest of the world. Oil/gas prices have doubled.What this has shown is that the developed world is extremely dependant on oil and gas, especially as it has removed the use of coal in power stations. Renewable energy is not dependable, so oil and gas is still necessary for most

Stock Tip - Sage plc seems good value to me

2026-03-16T13:41:00.009+00:00

Full disclosure - I hold shares in Sage (currently at a loss). I intend to sell my shares before April 5th to generate a loss for CGT purposes and then rebuy inside my ISA after April 5th and increase my holding.As well as being undervalued, it has a good dividend yield and good future growth.Here is ChatGPT's view on Sage.....The Sage Group's share price declined in January 2026 primarily

How I use AI for investing

2026-03-12T14:15:00.027+00:00

AI can hallucinate (it makes stuff) and can lie, however it can be very useful to get some ideas on investing.Many analysts reduce the current global economic cycle to four big forces:AI & Digital InfrastructureEnergy & Power SystemsGeopolitics & DefenseDemographics & Societal ChangeCurrent Thematic TrendsFor instance, we can use it to investigate themes and trends (thematic

Trumps latest tariffs - what shares am I buying now?

2026-02-23T11:59:00.026+00:00

DJTs latest petulant fit of pique seems to be the final nail in the coffin for non-USA investors. It seems that Europe do not want to depend on the USA for goods and services any more, and many large, unfinalised USA contracts are now on hold or even cancelled.In particular, very large European defence contracts and energy contracts with the USA are in jeopardy.This gives an even greater boost to

T212 Trading £157k update 2026-02-20

2026-02-21T10:35:00.013+00:00

I have not made many changes in my Trading 212 ISA or Investment accounts in the last month except for the selling of my FTSE RAFI PSRU ETF shares as the ETF was closing down.I am trying to diversify my holdings but still select countries and sectors which I think will do well in 2026.T212 Invest GIAI added £10k to my £100k deposit at the end of December 2025, so the Invest GIA account now has

Trading in March 2026?

2026-02-19T14:40:00.002+00:00

I suspect there will be large swings in the stock markets in March 2026.We should be ready for them, either to sell or buy. Perhaps even look for leveraged ETFs?The Swiss Franc, EU Euro and UK Pound are stronger gold currencies than the US Dollar...The GBP/USD rate has shown the USD has dropped in value all February...And it looks like it will continue to fall...?This means shares in USD will

Now is the time to think about Tax Loss Harvesting!

2026-02-19T13:39:00.005+00:00

If you live in the UK you will be aware that April 5th 2026 is the end of the tax year. Since it is a Sunday, Friday April 3rd 2026 is the last trading day.If you have investments in a General Investment Account (GIA) such as a Trading 212 Invest account, you should be thinking about Tax Loss Harvesting (TLH) now.If you want more details on what TLH is, I suggest you ask ChatGPT about Tax Loss

My favourite FTSE ETF (PSRU) is about to close!

2026-02-08T13:24:00.012+00:00

Yep, one of the best FTSE ETFs, in my opinion, was and is PSRU but it is sadly, closing very soon.The Invesco FTSE RAFI UK 100 UCITS ETF seeks to track the FTSE RAFI UK 100 index. The FTSE RAFI UK 100 index tracks 100 UK stocks. The FTSE RAFI Index Series selects and weights index constituents using four fundamental factors, rather than market capitalisation. The factors are dividends, cash flows

A free tool for Trading 212 UK Capital Gains Tax calculation!

2026-01-28T14:26:00.173+00:00

If you have a Trading 212 Invest account, you will probably need to calculate your Capital Gains tax after May 6th 2026.Note that the annual report from Trading 212 does not account for the HMRC 30-day rule or the same day rule to determine which shares have been sold. Any sell is first matched against...Shares bought and sold on the same dayShares acquired within the 30 days after the sale (on a

A good month for silver, gold, copper and miners (but not for SMRs)!

2026-01-24T13:06:00.011+00:00

I hold the following stocks and ETFs listed in the table below in my Trading 212 accounts.The current price change (last column) is calculated using the average price over approx. 30 days.Coeur Mining CDE thus shows 29.9% gain over the average monthly price of CDE. It has in fact gone up 40% overall since a month ago.By using the average price over the last month, it allows me to check if

Invest in Pawn (gold)?

2026-01-23T10:17:00.008+00:00

On 19th September 2025 I wrote a blog article 'Is Pawn good for you?'.In that article I suggested that we take a look at FirstCash FCFS and Ramsdens RFX.Since then Ramsdens has gone from 350p to 440p (25%) and FCFS has gone from $146 to $172 (17%).The value of gold is still climbing and pawn shops always do well in times of recession.Ramsdens (AIM market) has gone up 20% in the last month and

A free and viable alternative to the UK's Net Zero policy

2026-01-18T12:58:00.008+00:00

If the UK became a CO2 Net Zero energy country, it will cost us many £Trillions and quosh all our industries - this policy is making the UK one of the most expensive countries in the world to live in.We could insulate our houses better and save approx. 5% of CO2 emissions (much cheaper than buying a BEV). Eating 10% less meat would save 2% and 20% less waste food would also save 2%.So we could

Trading 212 £158k update 2026-01-16 + tips

2026-01-17T11:20:00.024+00:00

Another good week and I am at an all-time high :-) Over my two accounts (£130k mainly DCA deposits, I am up £26k in 12 months = 20% unrealised gain).I don't expect this to last however and still have £6k of cash ready for when the correction comes!T212 Invest (£110k Deposit - 72% IRR)This was up £2.6k (2%) over the week.The only thing I did in this account last week was to buy approx £600 more of

Company Stock picks for 2026

2026-01-11T09:55:00.004+00:00

This list below comprises medium to long-term companies which are picked for a UK investor's 2026 portfolio.The list was shared by the YouTube investor channel 'ISA Investment UK' who has built up his impressive portfolio from £422k to £1600k in just one year. Although he has used options quite a bit - he has over £300k in ETFs, £50k in crypto, £200 in options and £230k in cash - the rest (£800k)

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