December’s most popular funds, trusts and ETFs

In its first Funds Bulletin of 2024, Boring Money revealed the best selling funds, investment trusts and ETFs as markets ended the year with a flourish.

The most popular funds across Hargreaves Lansdown, AJ Bell, ii and Fidelity were Fidelity Index World, L&G Global Technology Index, Fundsmith Equity and Jupiter India.

Boring Money considered Hargreaves Lansdown’s ‘reassuringly expensive’ status, and explained that in some instances the Bristolian Behemoth has negotiated special terms with investment managers, entitling its customers to discounts on some, including 2 of the 4 most commonly purchased funds in December.

As an example it reports the Jupiter India fund has an ongoing charge of 0.69% on HL, compared to the usual charge of 0.99%, making it cheaper on HL than AJ Bell, despite the higher platform charge; L&G Global Technology Index Trust has a different share class on HL charging 0.20%, compared to 0.32% elsewhere.

Scottish Mortgage, City of London, Greencoat UK Wind and Polar Capital Technology were the most popular investment trusts; Boring Money cited the performance of JP Morgan Global Growth and Income in support of the investment company structure, as its annualised return over the past 5 years has been 15.2%, including a 22.6% return in 2023, allowing an investor 5 years ago to have doubled their money if they bought and held.

The performance of the S&P 500 has been sparkling over the past five years, and unsurprisingly its trackers continue to remain popular with UK investors, taking first and second spot for its distributing and accumulating variants.

Vanguard’s S&P 500 tracker returned 31% in 2019, 18% in 2020, 28% in 2021, -18% in 2022 and 26% last year in 2023; investors who decided to stick with US markets across this period will be glad they did so.