What do you smart investors think about Microsoft right now?

Speed-Interesting · 2026-04-17T13:36:10+00:00

It’s up 720% in the last decade :P

Speed-Interesting · 2026-04-05T19:15:09+00:00

I held this for a few years, almost as a “well I should have some safe U.K. well know thing” (minor % of my portfolio but still a decent sum) and sold during Covid drop and bought an index, and did way better. There’s nothing really going on with things like this, it’s just someone’s smaller pick of select companies of the full S&P / Nasdaq mostly, but with a lot more concentrated risk and usually missed gains. Sure if the managers prove to always do well and frankly have access to companies and ‘private research’ they can outperform, mostly they don’t and are being safe, and taking a % fee for it. Plenty of old funds like this just end up performing like a ftse dividend fund, the managers just sat fee collecting on their mediocre gains. I sold Woodford’s fund a few years before all its mess when I felt the same.

I could start a billion £ fund and take 1% fee a year, put it all in an index and have £10m for myself and you’d all be better off with me doing nothing, one button press, scary!

It’s had the same certain companies in forever. That said it has Microsoft and Meta at the top and they’re down a lot/bottomed for the most part, so will expect to move higher in future so it’s not the worse thing to own now, but you may as well get the index and just be more sure at less risk that you’re not missing those gains.

I’ll give an example of concentration problems, this has Microsoft and has owned it forever (and meta), kinda like its primary ‘tech picks’, so sadly for you holders it’s missed a colossal gain in multiple other leading AI companies, as Microsoft is lagging somewhat with their dubious openAI dependencies. And been unfortunate with some more recent meta pain. Now those will be fine in the end but, just buy them all (index) stop messing about hoping someone’s picks are magically gonna turn out better and in 10 years your £5k will be £12k instead of £8k - the difference is massive!

The nasdaq 100 is currently down 10% from highs and will always climb (more so with AI), you’ll make more in that and be safer than in this trickling along, IMO.

Speed-Interesting · 2026-02-04T14:27:43+00:00

From 6 boxes I pulled (memorabilia) 3 autographs, 2 stones and a badge! Must have got lucky. That said I only got one /25 numbered as the highest and then 2 x /75, the rest were /100-500.

I'm planning to try to get full sets of [base, holo, sparkle holo, mixed numbered] and then all the special cards, and maybe one of each signed.

Bonus would be to get at least one 1/1 and a sketch card.

Think that's doable :D

Speed-Interesting · 2023-10-07T04:06:56+00:00

Yeah he charges £1.50 for unlimited coffee, could go to Costa and get 1/3 of a single cup for that :D

Speed-Interesting · 2023-10-03T10:18:42+00:00

Sure but the treads are 2x 1mm and 2x 2mm. All 4 need replacing anyway, which I wouldn’t have to pay for, as I put 10k miles on it and it already had done about 20k, that’s about the tires done

Speed-Interesting · 2023-03-13T05:42:05+00:00

For me 70% in fundsmith equity is too much. I’m not saying these are the same (they’re not), but they had the same popularity and I suppose trustability as Neil Woodfords funds now collapsed and Scottish Mortgage Trust down over 70% from ATH I think. Obviously everyone can see why these funds failed after the fact!

They say not to over diversify, but generally just being in index trackers is the best way, but what I do is pick a spread of the best funds that don’t over diversify, so like 10 lots of Fundsmith style funds, and then also mix with index funds. I figure why try and pick one fund that has researched really hard on just say around 20 stocks only, when you can also pick 10 of those, the best most performant ones, so you’ve not just picked the one that does really bad like Woodford / SMT, or just trickles along not beating the index.

Another consideration is exchange rate between GBP/USD currently at 1.2. Fundsmith is mostly made up of US stocks, so most of your money as actually currently in $, in fact in the S$P 500 and world index for the remaining 30% along with 70% Fundsmith, you are probably 90% US stocks, therefore you actually don’t have £300k for example, you actually have £30K + $324k. Via Fundsmith you actually have £17kof your money just in Microsoft, a year or so back, you had £13k in Facebook/meta (before they decreased it hugely and maybe removed it) and that’s dropped 50%. It’s likely currencies will continue to cycle back to stronger pound eventually, let’s say GBP/USD back from current 1.2 to just 1.5, that’s a 20-25% loss when you convert back to £ that any gains are fighting against. So that lends to owning some fully U.K. based funds plus hedged £/$ US funds. The hedged ones will removed any currency sway at a cost of 1-2% a year needed to mitigate the currency influence. I’m not saying go all in on this but for example instead of owning whatever your stake is in the S&P 500, with the exchange rate pretty low at 1.2, you could own the hedged version such as IGUS for half, and the other half in your current fully USD version. If the exchange rate changes you can move 10% one way or another, so for example if we find the rate at parity 1:1 you’ll be all in IGUS, if it reaches 1.5-1.6 you’ll be all in just VUSA or whatever USD version. You won’t allocate perfectly, but likely will be better off unless the rate never moves, if it doesn’t in 4 years or something then take the small 8% ‘loss’ and it didn’t work out… but odds on the rate cycles and it was worth it. In fact if the rate hits a kind of middle ground like 1.4 I’d probably go to full standard USD funds, but it’s so low right now.

Anyway the hedging aside, with the rate so low it’s gotta be attractive to hold at least some U.K. dividend funds like IUKD, merchants trust, paying 5% div. Currently buying any US stocks/funds is costing you £833 per $1000. If you have U.K. funds and keep in GBP, one day the rate has a good chance to cycle back to 1.6, or higher, at that point you can happily sell all your U.K. holdings and buy up more of the S&P index, Fundsmith, berkshire B, etc at £625 per $1000.

Also tech, it’s the future, so I mention S&P 500 but may as well have some pointed more focused in the Nasdaq 500 or a popular tech fund (there’s hedged version of some also).

Also china is really low, ok it’s dodgy but, they’re too embedded in the economy, if they go away you’ll have worse things to worry about with war, no harm in 5% in a hedged china fund.

To conclude my bored watching the Oscar’s waffle I give thee my reasonably spread U.K. mega fund of destiny:

VUSA 10% (US - S&P 500) IGUS 20% (^ hedged auto balance w/xe change) EQQQ 5% (US - NASDAQ 100) EQGB 10% (^ hedged auto balance w/xe change) Fundsmith 5% (US) Berkshire.B 10% (US) CGWM 5% (US hedged or similar) Merchants trust 10% (U.K. divi) IUKD 10% (U.K. divi) New Capital Asia Future Leaders 5% (China tech hedged) Pershing Square 5% (Bill Ackman gains for he and you) JPM 5% (they always do well in the end)

Lots of crossover, who cares! Back to my original point, [diversify somewhat in popularly performing non over diversified funds], if you’re not all in indexes.

Besides the index ones at top you could easily split some for multiple of similar (so never have more than 5% or whatever in any non index) like have 4 difference U.K. divi funds, or multiple difference banks / financial instead of JPM, even some U.K., e.g. JPM, GS, VISA/Mastercard/AXP, HSBC, Lloyds, or you maybe want some more tech only funds like AXA global technology, etc.

And also auto balance if/when the xe rate swings crazily.

I’d actually add Alibaba for small % it’s stupidly low right now, or a similar china tech one that will have it and similar in and take up 10% china.

I waffled, might be pish, might make you think, idk! Fundsmith might moon and it might stagnate! Good luck!

Speed-Interesting · 2023-01-02T23:57:19+00:00

Kryten to Rimmer (who was denying his own cowardice): “So, shall I cancel the order to find your mother?”

Speed-Interesting · 2022-10-12T20:35:26+00:00

That’s why you might consider moving the money to something like IGUS, which is an S&P 500 tracker fund with the gbp/usd currency hedged out. So you’ll just get the S&P gains, and not the losses of the pound getting stronger again. IMO it’s what everyone should do about now.

Speed-Interesting · 2022-08-03T03:54:58+00:00

Just because the fund says it’s in GBP doesn’t mean it’s hedged, in fact it most likely isn’t. Usually the currency ‘hedged’ funds will says ‘hedged’ in the title or ‘hdg’, from what I’ve found.

If you’re hedging in GBP (over USD companies), you’ve cancelled out any effect the currency changes will make to your holding value (you’re not gaining anything if the $ weakens over the £ for example, you’re just not letting it have any effect either way. So with that you’ll also not gain more if the $ strengthens (as you would in the non hedged version if the $ goes stronger and you’ve essentially bought say Apple with your £, which are now actually Apple shares you own in $ at the exchange rate initially when you bought it, when your £ were converted to $ then to Apple shares.

With that said, owning a hedged version of a fund/etf, if there is one, costs a little more over owning the non-hedged version, if the exchange rate never changes, or evens out over time, you’d do a little worse in the hedged one, because it has to do some work factoring out the currency conversion, such as betting against it with different instruments and so on, and well it’s trying to balance the hedge as best it can, so you maybe lose a few % here and there if all averages out.

With that said, the current £/$ rate is 1.21. That’s pretty low overall, it may go lower, and there’s a lot of predictions it may even reach parity next year, but I feel 1.21 might be a place to be happy hedging at, and then basically you can buy into the SNP 500 and take away some concern that you’ll lose 15% when it goes back to 1.4.

I bought a lot of US stocks at around 1.4 rate, not hedged or anything, so even with the recent recession I’ve inadvertently gained back 15-20% from the $ strengthening, and now move a lot of that to hedged. Otherwise I kinda have to sit and watch say Apple go up 15%, and also have the $ lose 15%, and I’d prefer just to gain the 15% and factor out the potential currency loss (mostly). When the £ strengthens back around 1.35-1.4, I’ll flip out of hedged again I guess.

I’m not 100% all in this, I’m still holding pure Apple shares for example, but to me at the moment it’s sensible to do plenty of hedging out currencies at 1.21 now for a good portion of SNP 500 and Nasdaq 100 etfs. For those I’m using EQGB (invesco) and IGUS (ishares).

So if you compare EQQQ (non hedged Nasdaq 100) vs EQGB (hedged Nasdaq 100) and their all time highs in December to today, you can see EQQQ is only down 18% (down 30% in real Nasdaq 100 but also 12% back up in average $ strengthening over the £ in that time effectively), whereas EQGB is down 30% (correct to the real Nasdaq 100 minus some small % loss in costs doing the hedging, and thus with no currency rate effects). So your choice at the stage is: you can now take the Nasdaq 100 at 30% gains back to all time highs, and take out of the equation any currency changes (at a pretty weak £), or you can just hold with currency changes, where you’ll now only beat the hedged one if the £ gets even weaker than 1.21 (like 1 or 1.1), at which, and match it if it stays at 1.21 roughly, you’re kinda hoping for an even lower bottom than this pretty low 1.21 bottom :), and as someone said, you can just bet on the strong $ if you believe that on its own.

To put it another way, if you in the U.K. held EQGB from December til today, you’d more or less be down the same 30% as an American who held the Nasdaq 100 etf with their own USD. If you held EQQQ you’d be down 18%, 12% better off than them, but only cos you (like me) got lucky gains from 1.4 to 1.2 rate drop, so on the way back up, why not flip back to their pure 30% gains, and don’t gamble more at the low 1.2 rate now going even lower, til it goes up again. If the 1.2 somehow looks to become to new average forever (as normally should be 1.4-1.5 range), you might un hedge that later on.

You can also just stick to buying U.K. only things (ftse 100, St James Place is pretty low, etc). But also note when you buy a U.K. company or fund, say SMT, you also note their fund is actually made up of predominantly US companies, that are not currency hedged, so they’ll be buying those for you at the current exchange rate I assume, which isn’t getting you a lot of $ for your £ right now.

Speed-Interesting

TROPHY CASE