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When the inventory market bought off aggressively lately, I had a little bit of a dilemma. I noticed various 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 bought shares in Diageo and Greggs, each challenged by extraordinarily weak shopper spending, together with a few disappointing small-caps.
Once more although, this wasn’t massive sufficient to purchase each single discount I noticed popping up after President Trump’s tariffs announcement induced utter carnage.
At one level, Google guardian 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
Fortuitously, exchange-traded funds (ETFs) or funding trusts could be nice autos to resolve this drawback. In a single fell swoop, buyers like myself should buy right into a broad theme, sector or index. They provide prompt diversification throughout totally different shares.
Another alternatives I noticed opening up firstly 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 provides 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 a couple of of those about, together with iShares NASDAQ 100 UCITS ETF (LSE: CNX1), however all of them monitor the efficiency of the 100 largest non-financial shares listed on the Nasdaq trade.
Each Alphabet and Amazon are within the high 10 holdings, together with Apple and Nvidia, which have additionally bought off closely currently.
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 after I invested. As I write, the index stays practically 18% off its latest 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 positive to create additional volatility as corporations begin flagging up operational complications and alter/withdraw steerage.
Additionally, some worry the generative synthetic intelligence (AI) increase that has pushed the market increased in recent times is about to unwind. Chipmakers are beginning to face the truth that they’ll’t promote lots of their merchandise to Chinese language prospects on account of export restrictions.
For instance, Nvidia’s anticipating to take a $5.5bn hit within the first quarter of its present fiscal yr (which ends in late April). Whereas this may have a comparatively small monetary influence, it’s nonetheless breeding uncertainty.
Tech revolution
Over time time period although, I feel the Nasdaq 100 will get well misplaced floor and energy a lot increased.
It holds many of the greatest international tech corporations, providing my portfolio publicity to a number of present mega-trends (AI, cybersecurity, e-commerce, cloud computing and so on) and certain future ones (quantum computing).
If the market takes one other leg down, I’ll add to this ETF.
