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When the inventory market offered off aggressively lately, I had a little bit of a dilemma. I noticed quite a lot of alternatives open up in a matter of days, however realistically couldn’t seize all of them. I needed to be selective.
Fortunately, I did have some dry powder in my Shares and Shares ISA after repositioning my portfolio within the weeks and months earlier than. I offered shares in Diageo and Greggs, each challenged by extraordinarily weak client spending, together with a few disappointing small-caps.
Once more although, this wasn’t massive sufficient to purchase each single cut price I noticed popping up after President Trump’s tariffs announcement induced utter carnage.
At one level, Google mother or father Alphabet was buying and selling at simply 14 occasions forecast earnings for 2026, whereas Amazon inventory was cheaper than it had been because the 2007/08 market crash. They each nonetheless look good worth to me, as do another tech shares.
Shopping for the basket
Happily, exchange-traded funds (ETFs) or funding trusts might be nice autos to unravel this downside. In a single fell swoop, traders like myself should buy right into a broad theme, sector or index. They provide instantaneous diversification throughout totally different shares.
Another alternatives I noticed opening up in the beginning of April included FTSE 100 mining shares like Glencore and Fresnillo, the Mexican gold and silver producer. However as a substitute of shopping for them individually, I added to my holding in BlackRock World Mining Belief. This offers wide-ranging publicity to copper and gold manufacturing, and far else.
Equally, as a substitute of shopping for each Amazon and Alphabet inventory, I opted for a Nasdaq 100 index ETF. There are just a few of those about, together with iShares NASDAQ 100 UCITS ETF (LSE: CNX1), however all of them observe the efficiency of the 100 largest non-financial shares listed on the Nasdaq change.
Each Alphabet and Amazon are within the prime 10 holdings, together with Apple and Nvidia, which have additionally offered off closely recently.
High 10 holdings (as of April 2025)
| Weighting | |
| Apple | 8.73% |
| Microsoft | 8.24% |
| Nvidia | 7.87% |
| Amazon | 5.47% |
| Broadcom | 3.99% |
| Meta Platforms | 3.28% |
| Costco | 3.07% |
| Netflix | 2.95% |
| Tesla | 2.66% |
| Alphabet | 2.62% |
Extra volatility forward
The Nasdaq 100 had fallen 21% inside two months once I invested. As I write, the index stays practically 18% off its current excessive.
But that doesn’t imply the index can’t head decrease within the coming months. There stays an unbelievable quantity of uncertainty round international commerce and tariffs. With Q1 earnings season upon us, that is certain to create additional volatility as firms begin flagging up operational complications and alter/withdraw steering.
Additionally, some worry the generative synthetic intelligence (AI) increase that has pushed the market larger lately is about to unwind. Chipmakers are beginning to face the truth that they’ll’t promote a lot of their merchandise to Chinese language prospects resulting from export restrictions.
For instance, Nvidia’s anticipating to take a $5.5bn hit within the first quarter of its present fiscal 12 months (which ends in late April). Whereas it will have a comparatively small monetary affect, it’s nonetheless breeding uncertainty.
Tech revolution
Over time time period although, I feel the Nasdaq 100 will get better misplaced floor and energy a lot larger.
It holds a lot of the greatest international tech firms, providing my portfolio publicity to a number of present mega-trends (AI, cybersecurity, e-commerce, cloud computing and many others) and sure future ones (quantum computing).
If the market takes one other leg down, I’ll add to this ETF.
