Top of the stocks: Most bought and sold shares in January

For many, the start of the year tends to turn into a bit of a damp squib, as the overindulgences of the Christmas and New Year periods wears off and dry January is reluctantly observed…by David Brenchley

Over in financial market world, though, January 2026 was rather racier. The UK’s FTSE 100 broke the 10,000-point barrier for the first time, and emerging market equities were off to the races, continuing their impressive recent performance.

Undoubtedly, the stars of the show – as you’ll see below – were precious metals, led by the oldest and hardiest of real assets. The gold price surged above $5,000 for the first time in its history. Not to be outdone, silver hit $100, too.

Gold has now risen 200% since late 2022 and silver is up 383%, proving the old adage ‘silver is gold on steroids’. Having said that, those gains are lower than they might otherwise have been had the end of January been the start of a deep but brief correction in precious metals prices.

Top ten most bought and sold shares in January

These were the most (and least) popular shares with UK retail investors on three of the largest investment platforms last month:

Source: AJ Bell, Bestinvest, IG and interactive investor

Silver spoon

Fresnillo (FRES) continued its meteoric climb up our most-bought list to land in fourth throughout January. It’s no wonder, when the share price is up c. 425% over the past 12 months. Not only is Fresnillo the world’s largest silver miner, it is also Mexico’s second-biggest gold miner, so it is doubly leveraged to precious metals prices.

Glencore (GLEN) isn’t quite as shiny as FRES, but shares have also done well, having doubled since April 2025. Rumours abound that the Anglo-Swiss commodity trading and mining firm will be acquired by rival Rio Tinto (RIO) to create a mining giant worth over $200bn.

It remains to be seen whether gold, silver and copper miners are the next decade’s growth stocks – but investors burnt during the last commodity supercycle when miners overleveraged themselves and splashed the cash on huge mergers will be hoping management are more cautious this time around.

AI disruption

As the artificial intelligence trade rolls on, global investors seem to be becoming more discerning and looking underneath the hood of companies in many sectors. This is certainly true of software and data businesses, with the likes of Adobe (ADBE) and London Stock Exchange Group (LSEG) selling off thanks to predictions that AI will disrupt their businesses.

It’s also happening with Microsoft (MSFT), a company that has been in the top ten largest companies in the world for decades now. The $3trn cloud computing provider has seen shares fall 25% since their October 2025 peak. The stock saw 10% – or a staggering $357bn – wiped off its market capitalization on 30/01/2026, the day after its Q2 earnings.

MSFT actually beat analysts’ expectations for revenue, but the growth of its cloud computing platform Azure came in below forecasts – a key plank of the investment case. Still, some remain upbeat, with MSFT featuring in our most-bought stocks list for the first time ever.

Top five most bought investment trusts in January

Moving onto investment trusts, metals were, again, popular, but the list was little changed, in truth:

Source: AJ Bell, Bestinvest and interactive investor

Same old, same old

Unsurprisingly, there was little change in the make-up of the most-popular investment trusts. In fact, the only major change was the return of JPMorgan Global Growth & Income (JGGI) after a four-month hiatus.

The trust has traded on an average premium of 0.7% in the five years to 28/01/2026, but has fallen to a small but seemingly persistent discount since Q2 2025. This can be put down to 2025 being a challenging year for fundamentals-driven strategies such as JGGI, as investors favoured more speculative companies.

The discount has narrowed more recently, though remains a discount. We recently published our latest research note on JGGI, which you can read here.

As with the theme du jour, BlackRock World Mining (BRWM) remained popular, albeit dropping from second to fourth. The trust has benefitted from the rise of gold, driven in part by geo-political uncertainty, particularly big buying of the precious metal by central banks worried about their reliance on the US dollar.

BRWM also has plenty of exposure to silver and copper, among other commodities, creating a diversified portfolio of miners well-positioned to capitalize on a potential commodity supercycle.

UK equities continue to perform well, as defensive bastions to counteract the US’s growthier, AI-heavy stock market. Temple Bar (TMPL) and City of London (CTY) remain investors’ large-cap UK trusts of choice, having rewarded shareholders handsomely recently.

Conclusion

January was a good month overall for most, especially those jumping on the commodity bandwagon That said, the c. 20% fall in the gold price and the 40% fall in the silver price seen at the end of the month is a reminder that these are volatile beasts and healthy corrections are par for the course when investing in the sector. Buyer beware.

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