Investing into ETFs is dangerous.

Society isn’t going to tell you this.

Wall Street isn’t going to tell you this.

Vanguard isn’t going to tell you this.

Most of the gains in your favourite ETFs come from 5-7 stocks.

It’s very rare that you meet someone who doesn’t invest in ETFs.

Someone who only invests in individual stocks.

I am that someone.

I’ve been investing for 16 years.

I’ve never once bought an ETF.

I don’t say that to brag.

I say that because I want to give you a different perspective on investing.

It’s not a one size fits all policy.

People will harp on about the benefits of investing in an ETF.

But they’ll never tell you the downside.

They’ll never mention how little their portfolio actually grows.

How it’s the same 5-7 stocks that provide 50% or more of the gains.

That they would have made MORE money through investing in those stocks individually…

Aka the exact strategy that I undertake.

Investing in ETFs is great if you want to be average.

17% last year is nothing to laugh at.

~12% so far this year is pretty good too.

But ETF investing is not going to give you hundreds of percent of gains.

You won’t get thousands of percents…

Well maybe you might if you stay invested for hundreds of years.

The point I’m trying to make is that ONLY investing in ETFs isn’t the golden goose everyone makes it out to be.

When you invest in ETFs you learn nothing about the business behind stocks.

You become a passive and lazy investor who just piles in and buys more units.

Investing is an art form for me.

I want to learn about how to analyse a company.

What the CEO is up to.

I want to be ethical, and make sure I don’t invest in companies that I don’t agree with.

I want to understand what makes companies go up and down in price.

Investing in an ETF robs you of all of this.

It’s like buying microwaved meals vs hunting the food for yourself.

I appreciate the sport, the structure and the art.

I’ve got nothing against ETF investors, but I’m very much against those who talk as if doing anything else is gambling.

Just my two cents, don’t shoot the messenger!

Investing in individual stocks has taught me a lot

I know more now than I ever have.

I can value companies now.

I know about P/E ratios.

I understand balance sheets.

I can read company reports.

I feel as if I have the tools on deck to do something incredible.

Liek when I found ASTS and RKLB in 2024.

It’s that time again and it’s not going to come from an ETF.

I feel so strongly about this that I speak about it regularly on my social media platforms.

If you resonate with this let me know.

If you don’t lets start a dialogue.

It’s a topic you’ll see me speak on more as time goes on.

I hope everyone had a great bank holiday.

I’m ready to see what this week in the market has in store for us.

I’ll write three more articles this week so stay posted.

Two will be free and one will be paid.

~ Ryan

Most pensions in the UK are completely cooked.

I mean, real real bad.

Most people don't know what they’re invested in.

I’ve spoken to adults who don’t know what their pension is invested in.

They have no idea about funds.

They don’t know about equities.

They know nothing about bonds.

It’s a literal nightmare.

When you’re financially illiterate…

You don’t know what you don’t know.

It’s your responsibility to check your pension.

To see what you’re invested in.

If you don’t know where to start…

I made this video for you.

It’s important that you watch it.

Your future is at stake.

Don’t let your future self down.

Speak soon.

~ Ryan

Getting rich quickly is a lie.

You’ve been convinced by social media that you’ll become a millionaire overnight.

I’m here to tell you that’s not true.

Most of my money in the stock market was made between years 5 and 10.

Yup, 5 and 10.

Unless you get incredibly lucky, you need a minimum of 5 years invested to see some real returns.

No one on social media is going to tell you this.

Because no one has stayed invested for 5 years.

I’ve been invested for 16 years.

I can tell you the ins and outs.

Getting Rich Quick Means Risk

When you’re trying to get rich quick you’re taking unnecessary risks.

One of the big ways in which I bulletproofed my portfolio was by having the correct structure.

80% Bluechip and 20% Speculative.

That’s my non-negotiable.

The problem with trying to get rich quick is that you’ll end up taking some insane risks.

80/20 isn’t going to get you rich quick.

You’ll end up putting too much money into Speculative positions and increasing your chances of blowing up your entire account.

I’ve seen it happen time and time again.

Don’t let inexperience lead you down a risky path.

Invest sustainably and I promise the capital will come.

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Investing For the Long Term is Boring

Investing for the long term is boring.

It’s not exciting.

Delayed gratification is the number one skill you can hone.

If you can do this you’ll thrive.

The reason why most people can’t is because investing is boring.

Like really boring.

If you invest in a company today and it’s only throwing you off 20% a year it looks as if nothing’s happening. You also probably don’t have too much invested in the stock/portfolio at this point either.

So it’s a snails crawl.

The excitement comes after a couple of years once you hit the high five figures/six figures.

And that’s why I think year 5 to year 10 is the sweet spot.

The problem is, most of you reading this won’t last until year five.

You’ll see your gains and want to take them out of the stock market and go ahead and buy something you don’t actually need. I’ve seen it happen time and time again.

But…

If you can stay the course and ride out the “boring” part, you can honestly change your life.

Compounding Will Change Your Life

We often talk about compounding without really understanding what’s going on.

We (yes even me) treat 7 figures in the stock market as the end goal.

What we fail to realise is that the game doesn’t end when you hit 7 figures.

Charlie Munger famously said:

"The first $100,000 is a b***, but you gotta do it. I don’t care what you have to do—if it means walking everywhere and not eating anything that wasn't purchased with a coupon, find a way to get your hands on $100,000. After that, you can ease off the gas a little bit."

And everyone tells you about the compounding effect once you hit 6 figures.

What about the compounding effect when you hit 7 figures?

Every single 1% gain is an additional £10,000.

That’s what I’m talking about.

So even if your portfolio does 7-8% a year (conservatively)….

That’s an additional £70-£80,000 for doing absolutely nothing.

Let that sink in for a little bit.

Investing is a game that EVERYONE has to play.

It should be mandatory.

Once you see this you cannot unsee it.

Make the Sacrifices Now

Now that you’ve been armed with this information you have two choices…

1. Do nothing and continue along the path you’re currently on

2. Priortise investing for the long term and compounding in the stock market

I know which one I’m picking.

Good luck on your investing journey and stay posted for regular emails.

~ Ryan

P.S. If you want to see my latest video on how to actually build wealth in the stock market… Check this out 👇

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Waiting to invest in the stock market is a false prophecy.

Yet I hear the argument all of the time.

I invested in my first stock 16 years ago.

Today I’m known as TheFbaInvestor and I talk about investing daily on social media.

All of my friends and family know this.

Yet I’ve got people around me who STILL choose not to invest.

“I’ll do it next year”.

“The stock market is going to crash anyway”.

“I don’t have enough money”.

“It’s too complicated”.

But these statements are flawed for two fundamental reasons…

1. You’re not getting any younger

2. Inflation is steadily eating away at your savings

Each year that you “don’t” invest in the stock market is another year in which you get poorer.

2025 was an exceptional year in the stock market.

I had a number of stocks do fanstastically.

Google which I’ve owned since 2015 went up ~ 70%.

Yes 70% in a year… Google… A bluechip stock.

Nvidia went up 40%.

RocketLab a highly speculative space stock went up 250%.

AST Spacemobile did 200% in 2025.

Even something completely passive like the S&P 500 which tracks the top 500 stocks in the USA did 17% last year.

Plus…

If you invested inside a tax wrapper like a Stocks and Shares ISA there wouldn’t be a penny of capital gains tax to pay.

Compare that with you getting a pay rise…

When’s the last time you got a 17% pay rise in a year?

And that’s the bare minimum.

Sure the stock market can have it’s down years too.

2022 was Brutal.

(But it’s bittersweet as that’s when I started the 3 year old’s Junior ISA)

Then 2023, 2024, 2025! And 2026 have been awesome.

Don’t let one “bad” year put you off investing in the stock market.

I started 16 years ago.

I wish I started when I was born (sorry Mum and Dad).

The best time to start investing was ten years ago.

The next best time is today.

Don’t put off investing any longer than you have to.

In a world where everything is getting more expensive and you’re being robbed of experiences… from buying a home, from having children, from living life on your own terms…

Investing is the one weapon that no one can take away from you.

The way I see it…

You’re going to buy from these companies anyway.

You’ll get the latest iphone.

You’ll buy the latest graphics card.

Why not own the stock too? You can do both.

Don’t wait to invest.

Invest and wait.

Happy Friday!

~ Ryan

P.S. I’m going to be releasing even more emails than I could ever imagine. If you’re not subscribed already, you’re going to miss out on a lot of gems. Here’s the cadence… three free articles a week and one paid article weekly. Writing is my safe space, it’s where I feel most creative and it’s where I’m going to be spending more of my time. If you made it this far I want to thank you, I love you all and I hope you find my content helpful and useful.

Everyone online tells you that investing in the stock market is easy.

In actual fact, the number of people in the UK who have a stocks and shares ISA is incredibly low.

16-26% of Brits own a stocks and shares isa.

1 in 5 Brits have never even heard of a stocks and shares isa.

So coming across someone who actively talks about tax free wrappers, investing in the stock market and building a 7 figure portfolio is incredibly rare.

That’s why spreading financial education is so important to me.

I never had anyone like me growing up.

Investing was always a taboo subject.

If we couldn’t afford something that was it, there was no huge plan.

Nice things were for those other families, not for us.

When I got older I decided that I wanted to put a stop to that.

Instead of just being a consumer, I was going to be someone who invested and made money from these businesses that others spent their salary on each month.

I’ve been investing in the stock market for the past 16 years.

I first bought Apple stock in 2010.

These are all of the lessons I’ve learnt that no one else is going to teach you:

Read more

Every quarter now, four companies report earnings and the same headline repeats: “capex guidance raised.”

Not cut.

Not maintained.

Raised.

Again.

And it’s almost like your heart drops.

You know what’s coming next.

Your stock is about to tank.

But there’s more to Capex than meets the eye.

Lets break this down…

The Actual Numbers…

Amazon, Microsoft, Alphabet and Meta are guiding to a combined figure in the region of $725 billion of capital expenditure in 2026.

That’s up roughly 77% from the ~$410 billion they spent in 2025, and analysts are already modelling $1 trillion+ for 2027.

Break it down by company and it gets even more interesting:

• Amazon: ~£200B (leading the pack, driven by AWS and its custom Trainium chips)

• Microsoft: ~$190B, after Satya Nadella openly admitted Azure is “capacity constrained,” turning away AI revenue it physically cannot serve

• Alphabet: raised its own ceiling to as high as $205B at Q2 earnings, after starting the year lower

• Meta: raised guidance twice this year, most recently to $125-145B, citing higher component and data centre costs, with Zuckerberg framing it as funding for “personal superintelligence”

For context on just how extreme this is: capex-to-revenue ratios are now sitting at roughly 47% for Microsoft, 46% for Alphabet, and 54% for Meta.

These are companies spending nearly half of what they bring in, before profit, just to build.

That’s not a normal investment cycle.

That’s a company betting the balance sheet on being right.

But the thing is, it’s not just one or two companies that are doing this, it’s all of them.

So what do they know that the rest of us don’t?

Everyone’s against Capex spend, so why are companies doubling down on it?

Where the Money Actually Goes

Here’s the bit most headlines skip past.

When you hear “$700 billion in AI capex,” the natural assumption is: it’s all GPUs.

Some of it obviously is.

NVIDIA’s own numbers confirm the chip appetite is real.

Data centre revenue hit $62.3 billion in a single quarter, up 75% year-on-year, with networking revenue up 263%.

But the constraint has shifted.

Chips are difficult to get, but they are available if you commit early and pay up.

The big bottleneck is electricity…

And no one is talking about this.

Every hyperscaler earnings call this year has quietly pivoted from “we need more GPUs” to “we need more power.”

Microsoft has been signing nuclear power purchase agreements.

Data centre operators are fighting utility companies for grid capacity in Virginia, Texas, and increasingly here in the UK too.

This is why I keep coming back to power infrastructure, grid names, and nuclear as part of the picks-and-shovels conversation, not just the obvious chip names.

The Picks-and-Shovels Approach

I’ve said this a hundred times on the reels and I’ll say it again here because it’s the actual thesis: when an entire industry is in a gold rush, you don’t need to find the gold.

You need to own the people selling the shovels.

NVIDIA is the most obvious shovel-seller in this cycle, and it remains a conviction position of mine for good reason.

But a $725 billion spending wave doesn’t just flow into one company.

Think about what actually has to physically exist for this capex to turn into a working data centre:

• The chips themselves (NVIDIA, and the custom silicon each hyperscaler is now building in-house)

• The networking equipment connecting thousands of GPUs together

• The physical buildings and the cooling systems keeping them from melting

• The power generation and grid infrastructure feeding the whole thing

• The memory and storage sitting alongside the compute

Every one of those categories has a handful of companies with genuine, structural exposure to this spending wave, regardless of which specific AI model or app wins the fight for the end user.

That’s the appeal of the picks-and-shovels approach: you’re not betting on who wins the AI race, you’re betting that the race itself continues.

The Uncomfortable Question

Here’s where I want to be straight with you.

When Alphabet raised its 2026 capex forecast back in July, its stock fell 7% on the news, and it dragged Amazon, Meta and Microsoft down with it.

Investors aren’t just nodding along and buying the dip anymore.

There’s a real, growing scrutiny of whether the return on this capital actually shows up, or whether we’re watching the tech equivalent of the dot-com fibre build-out: correct in direction, wildly premature in scale, and brutal for anyone holding the wrong names when sentiment turns.

That doesn’t mean the thesis is wrong.

It means the thesis needs nuance. “AI infrastructure spending is going up” is not, by itself, an investment case.

The question you actually need to sit with is: which of these companies has pricing power and genuine competitive moat in what they’re selling into this build-out, and which are simply along for the ride because the market is currently rewarding anyone who says “AI” on an earnings call?

That’s a much harder question, and it’s exactly the kind of thing worth working through with a proper framework rather than a gut feeling, because gut feelings are how people end up chasing a name up 400% right before it corrects 60%.

What This Means for How You Think About Your Portfolio

I’m not going to tell you what to buy in a free post (or a paid one for that matter), that’s not how I operate here, and honestly it wouldn’t serve you well even if I did.

What I want to leave you with is the framework:

This capex supercycle is real, it’s accelerating, and it is going to keep dominating markets through 2026 and into 2027 based on what these companies are telling us themselves.

Whether that’s an opportunity or a trap for your specific portfolio depends entirely on position sizing, on whether you already have concentration in this theme without realising it, and on whether you’re buying conviction or buying hype.

If you’re in the free tier here at Bullish by Nature, that’s your “what.”

The “how and when,” the actual mechanics of position sizing into a theme like this, when the risk-reward tips too far one way, and which specific names across the picks-and-shovels chain I’m actually holding and why, that’s what the paid tier and The Trading Lounge exist for.

Find Out More

Either way, don’t just scroll past a $725 billion number without asking what it means for your own money.

That’s the whole point of paying attention in the first place.

Not Financial Advice / Do Your Own Research

Some are worth a lot more today. Some lessons cost me more than money.

I still have the confirmation email.

17 shares of Nvidia.

A few hundred pounds.

Nothing that felt like a big deal at the time.

That position has split enough times that I now hold over 680 shares.

On paper, that sounds like a genius call.

It wasn’t.

It was one decision, made with a framework, and then left alone for years while I did absolutely nothing clever at all.

That’s the part nobody wants to hear. The “nothing clever” part.

This is the power of letting your winners run.

Here’s what I actually did:

I didn’t time the top.

I didn’t sell at the first 20% pop to “lock in gains.”

I didn’t panic when it dropped to $87 in April 2025.

I bought it as a long-term, high-conviction position inside a portfolio built on a simple split, mostly blue-chip (80%), and a smaller slice genuinely speculative.

Then I left the position to do its job.

And I added two more pots of Nvidia in my GIA and SIPP.

I’ve got 16 years in markets, a background in investment banking, and if I’m honest, this is still the single biggest lesson I keep relearning: the framework matters more than the pick.

So here’s what this newsletter actually is.

Not stock tips.

Not “buy this now” calls.

I’m not interested in being right for a week.

I’m interested in being right over a decade.

And I want to show you exactly how I think about that, in public, with real positions and real reasoning.

Every week here, you’ll get:

• My thoughts on company earnings

• My 80/20 framework for balancing blue-chip conviction against speculative upside

• My opinion on where the economy is going in 2026/2027

• The reasoning that’s made me hundreds of thousands of pounds PROFIT in the stock market

I’m not doing this from the sidelines.

Every framework I write about is one I use on my own money, in the same portfolio I’ll be showing you.

If that sounds like your kind of investing, welcome.

Let’s build some conviction.

Ryan

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What’s the best investing decision you ever made by doing nothing? Reply or drop it in the comments, I read every one.