I think this UK stock has a lot of potential. Because the company serves two high-growth markets – space and defence.

On the space side, the company is winning huge deals with SpaceX. Last year, for example, it landed a contract with the space firm worth $62.5 million. This is to provide gallium nitride (GaN) E-band products (chips designed to provide higher power, improved efficiency, and greater thermal performance for satellite communications). This deal is expected to deliver ‘material’ revenues in FY2027 and FY2028.

Meanwhile on the defence side, the company has been winning a range of smaller deals. For example, in December, it won a £7 million deal with a major European defence prime for the supply of high-performance active components for a long-standing electronic sensor programme. This side of the business shouldn’t be ignored. With European countries set to ramp up their defence spending in the years ahead, Filtronic could be a major beneficiary.

Now, while this is all very exciting, there are quite a few risks here. One downside to this stock is that the valuation is high. Right now, we are looking at a forward-looking P/E ratio of about 64. That doesn’t leave any room for error.

Another issue is customer concentration. Recently, a lot of revenue growth has been coming from SpaceX. What if it decides to manufacture in-house?

Investors should also be aware that contract wins can be sporadic. So, there could easily be a period where there’s not a lot of activity and investors lose interest, sending the share price down.

Finally, profitability is volatile. For the first half of FY2026, profits were down sharply due to investments in manufacturing capabilities and an increase in staff numbers.

Management was pretty upbeat when it provided a H2 outlook earlier this month, however. “With a record order book, increasing customer diversification and the business now operating at greater scale, we have entered the second half confident of continuing our planned growth,” said CEO Nat Edington.

In light of this upbeat outlook, I think the stock is worth a look. However, I would keep position size small to minimise risk.

There are lots of reasons to be bullish on the S&P 500 index right now.

For a start, the tech companies at the top of the index look poised for another year of strong growth. Nvidia, for example, is expected to see 54% revenue growth over the next year.

Secondly, the index is broadening out. Today, the S&P 500 is no longer only about tech – lots of sectors are doing well including Healthcare, Materials, and Industrials.

Third, corporate earnings are expected to grow at a healthy rate in the near term. According to FactSet, S&P 500 earnings are projected to increase 15% this year.

All that said, I expect to see volatility this year. With Donald Trump in the White House, there are going to be plenty of unexpected tweets/announcements that cause investor anxiety – this could put a cap on index growth.

Another issue is interest rates. If these don’t come down as expected, it could lead to stock market volatility.

One other issue to think about is valuations. Currently, the median P/E ratio across the S&P 500 on a forward-looking basis is about 20, which is quite high.

As for how high the index can go in 2026, I’m going to say that it can hit 7,400 at some point this year. That’s about 6% above today’s level.

For what it’s worth, here are some year-end targets from major Wall Street firms:

Goldman Sachs – 7,600
JP Morgan – 7,500
Morgan Stanley – 7,800
Oppenheimer – 8,100
Deutsche Bank – 8,000
Citigroup – 7,700
UBS – 7,700
Bank of America – 7,100

Looking at these targets, the consensus view is that the S&P 500 index is going to have another decent year.

eToro shares have not performed well since the IPO. As I write this, they’re trading at $31 – about 40% below the IPO price of $52.

It’s hard to know exactly why the share price has tanked. I think it’s probably related to a few different factors including:

* Competition: eToro operates in a very competitive industry and it’s up against some very powerful players. Earlier this month, analysts at Goldman Sachs downgraded the stock to ‘neutral’ on the back of competition concerns.

* Robinhood: Rival Robinhood is having a great deal of success right now. I feel like there’s a view in the market that this company is going to be the long-term winner with younger investors. Note that Robinhood has been expanding into Europe recently (eToro’s main market).

* Prediction markets: Prediction markets have taken off recently. eToro doesn’t offer this yet (it’s planning to launch this feature later in 2026).

* Crypto weakness: eToro is a major crypto trading platform. And crypto has been weak recently – Bitcoin is well off its highs. It’s worth noting that interest in Bitcoin has been declining. It seems young investors are focusing on other areas of the financial markets right now (e.g. prediction markets).

* Profitability: eToro’s profit margins are well below the industry average.

Personally, I wouldn’t short the stock. Because the valuation is quite low now. According to Stockopedia, analysts are looking for earnings per share of $2.69 this year. That puts the stock on a forward-looking P/E ratio of just 11.5. I don’t see a lot of downside at that valuation. But I could be wrong.

Depends what you are looking for but as a growth/quality investor, I like the Blue Whale Growth fund. This is a concentrated, growth-focused global equity fund managed by Stephen Yiu.

Yiu is good at identifying growth themes and capitalising on them. For example, he’s made a ton of money for investors in recent years on the AI buildout theme.

Not only has he made a killing on Nvidia, but he has also done well with stocks like Broadcom, Lam Research, Taiwan Semi, and Vertiv (these stocks were all in the top 10 holdings at the end of November).

In terms of performance, the fund has a really good track record. Since its inception in 2017, it has returned about 220%. That translates to a return of around 15-16% per year.

This year, it returned 25.7% to the end of November. That’s well ahead of the S&P 500 and MSCI ACWI indexes.

I’ll point out that this fund can be quite volatile at times. When there’s market weakness, losses can be magnified due to its growth/technology focus.

In 2022, for example, when the market fell, the fund returned -27.6%. So, it may not be suitable for those seeking capital preservation.

If an investor is seeking long-term growth, however, I see this fund as a nice complement to a standard index tracker fund. It’s structured very differently to the average index tracker and has more growth potential in the long run.

I can think of a few reasons. For a start, it has been very cold in parts of the US recently. I was over in Minnesota for Thanksgiving and it was -10 deg celcius or colder on many days. We also got a ton of snow, which isn’t that common for that time of year. That kind of weather is going to increase demand for natural gas significantly due to the fact that it is used for heating. Note that gas storage drawdowns around then were larger than expected. For example, a report from the Energy Information Administration (EIA) on 20 November showed a drawdown of -14 billion cubic feet, surpassing the expected reduction of -12 billion cubic feet.

Another factor at play is US exports. Recently, the US has been shipping record amounts of natural gas overseas. Europe has been a dominant buyer of US liquified natural gas (LNG) due to the fact that it is moving away from Russian pipeline gas. Here, countries like the Netherlands, France, Spain, and the UK have all been buying. Countries in Asia and Latin America have also been buyers of the commodity. This has left less of a cushion for US domestic needs. As a result, supply and demand dynamics have pushed prices up.

It’s worth noting that natural prices have come down a little bit recently. Milder US weather forecasts for the Christmas period and less storage drawdown than expected in the week to 28th November have been two drivers of the weakness.

My gut feeling is that the share price won’t hit £1 in 2025. Why? There are a few reasons:

* The valuation looks pretty full right now. Currently, analysts expect earnings of 7.33p per share from Lloyds this year. That puts the bank’s P/E ratio at 12. For a domestic bank that has minimal exposure to higher growth areas of banking such as wealth management, investment banking, and trading, that multiple is high. Barclays and HSBC trade at 9.2 and 9.9 times this year’s forecast earnings. So, Lloyds is trading at a premium to these banks. Note that the average price target is 97p. So, analysts don’t expect to see £1 in the near term.

* Key/round numbers often act as a form of ‘resistance’ for a share price. This is technical analysis 101. I believe we’re likely to see that here with £1. What I think will happen is that near £1, a lot of investors will look to take profits. This will put pressure on the share price and stop it from breaching the £1 mark. It’s worth pointing out that Lloyds’ share price has risen a lot in 2025 – year to date it’s up 60%+. After that kind of gain, some profit taking is to be expected.

* The UK Budget (to be announced on 26 November) threatens to throw up a few negatives for UK banks. Recently, there has been talk of higher taxes on banks, which could reduce profitability.

* Those looking for income have many superior options today. Right now, Lloyds shares yield less than 4%.

Now, I’m not saying that Lloyds shares can’t keep rising in the medium term. I just think that £1 (more than 10% higher than the share price today) is unlikely in 2025.