Cactus Personal Finance

Hello everyone! Welcome back to my page and today I’m going to talk about my personal portfolio construction in stocks and shares.

In this paper you will see how much money is invested via exchange traded funds using £20,000 yearly ISA allowance.

As per usual, this is not financial advice. If you’re unsure about anything, it’s worth seeking advice from a regulated financial advisor.

If you’re lucky enough to have spare cash to invest you can always think about using your ISA account to grow your money tax free. Remember that before investing your money in the stock markets, it’s worthing thinking again if you would need that money in the next couple of years. If the answer is no then this might be a good way to grow your money in a tax free wrapper.

Now let’s go straight to the main point and how I have invested £20,000 in the stock markets in 2025.

• 50% in the united states of america
• 5% world excluding the united states of america
• 5% in asian emerging markets excluding china
• 5% in china
• 5% in japan
• 5% in europe
• 5% in gold
• 20% in defence sector

As you can see my approach was based on geographical diversification.

Now I’m going to talk about which ETF you need to select to construct this type of portfolio.

• 50% in the U.S.A stock markets
  • 30% or £6,000 in S&P 500
    • IE00B3Y8X563 iShares S&P 500 GBP Hedged UCITS ETF Accumulation
  • 20% or £’4,000 in Nasdaq 100
    • IE00BYVTMW98 Invesco Nasdaq 100 UCITS ETF GBP Hedge Accumulation
• 5% or £1’000 in world excluding U.S.A.
  • IE0006WW1TQ4 Xtrackers MSCI World ex USA UCITS ETF
    
• 5% or £1’000 in emerging markets excluding China
  • GB00B8N44B34 Invesco Emerging Markets ex China
    
• 5% or £1’000 in China
  • IE00BQT3WG13 iShares MSCI China A UCITS ETF U.S. Dollar (Accumulating)
    
• 5% or £1’000 in Japan
  • IE00B7XYN974 iShares MSCI Japan GBP Hedged UCITS ETF British Pound Accumulating
    
• 5% or £1’000 in Europe excluding UK
  • IE00BVDPJP67 iShares MSCI Europe ex-UK GBP Hedged UCITS ETF Distribution
    
• 20% or £4’000 in emerging markets corporate bonds
  • IE000D352U62 iShares J.P. Morgan $ EM Corp Bond UCITS ETF Hedged British Pound (Distributing)
    
• 5% or £1’000 in gold
  • XS2183935605 Invesco Physical Gold GBP Hedged

I carefully selected those ETF matching 2 important criteria to fit ISA account:

• ISA eligible
• GBP hedge as we invest overseas it’s important to stay invested in GBP to avoid losing money in foreign currencies, except for £1’000 invested in China.

To summarize my proposed portfolio construction for £20,000 annual allowance:

75% in stocks (£15’000)
20% in bonds (£4’000)
5% in gold (£1’000)

It’s worth noting that those numbers are an estimation. You need to take into consideration trading fees each time you click buy onto the platform.

I hope you enjoy reading this paper. If you have any comments feel free to drop a line.