Top of the stocks: most bought and sold stocks in April

Cadbury shenanigans, Kanye karma and the shares and trusts UK investors were buying in April…by Jo Groves

April served up its usual mix of spring optimism fading to ever-so-British disappointment. Shrinkflation was bad enough but nobody warned us they’d come for the nation’s favourite chocolate treat. Unless, that is, you’ve made peace with your Mini Eggs tasting suspiciously like the five-year-old cooking chocolate lurking at the back of the pantry – and paying twice the price for the privilege.

We did, however, enjoy a rare dose of cultural schadenfreude when Kanye West was blocked from entering the UK for the Wireless Festival, provoking equal amounts of outrage and quiet relief, depending on your postcode. It’s a pity our vetting procedures aren’t always quite so discriminating.

After a bruising March, markets restored some order in April. The S&P 500 had the better of it, bouncing 10% to another record high, with the FTSE 100 treading water but keeping its nose above the 10,000 mark.

The Magnificent Seven posted a record quarter, with their aggregative market cap hitting a $22 trillion record high on the back of a 60% rise in combined after-tax profit (with NVIDIA yet to report). But dig underneath the headline numbers and free cash flow is shrinking, buybacks are being wound down and three of the seven are still in the red for 2026.

So, which shares and funds were UK investors slipping into their Easter baskets in April?
 

Top 10 most bought and sold shares in April

 
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 and Freetrade

Buying the Magnificent dip

Five of the Magnificent Seven made April’s buy list, with Apple and Meta the only absentees. All seven finished March in the red but April proved better business.

Microsoft (MSFT) was arguably the standout opportunity, down more than 20% year-to-date heading into April after markets fretted about AI cannibalising its core software business. Those who bought the dip were richly rewarded with a 10% gain in April after above-expectation Q3 results. That said, its OpenAI tie-up faces stiff competition from the likes of Claude and Gemini, with soaring spending posing a growing headache.

NVIDIA (NVID) played both sides of the trade, with investors seemingly unable to agree on whether the 10% year-to-date share price increase is a bargain or a sign of leaner times to come. It chalked up a 14% rise in April, smashing through the $5 trillion mark in the process, but can it keep up the momentum?

Its 90%-plus share of the GPU market certainly remains an impressively wide moat and its proprietary software ecosystem CUDA makes it genuinely difficult for AI developers to walk away, regardless of the alternatives. On the bear side of the equation, Meta, Microsoft and Alphabet could feasibly flip from customer to competitor if their rival chip development bears fruit.

Elsewhere, shareholders in Tesla (TSLA) are keeping the faith that it’s not just a car manufacturer given the pricing pressure on the EV front. In fairness, there’s fingers in a lot of pies from humanoid robots to robotaxis, not to mention that all-important stake in SpaceX, but the share price has continued to go into reverse (for now at least).
 

Best of British

Investors jumped on a late-April dip to add BAE Systems (BA.), with record sales, a healthy order pipeline and a key role in the Australia-UK-US security alliance all supporting the investment case. The question is how much of that is already in the price after a 370%-plus return over the last five years and a valuation that sits towards the upper end of its peer group.

Rolls-Royce (RR.) is in a similar boat after a reassuring April trading update. But the share price has done a lot of the heavy lifting since CEO Tufan Erginbilgic took over and a prolonged conflict could yet weigh on flying hours and civil aerospace revenues. Perhaps not entirely surprising that some investors have decided to come back to earth after its mammoth 1,100% five-year return.

Taylor Wimpey’s (TW.) appearance on the buy list looks rather more brave in hindsight. A late April update revealed falling prices, rising input costs and a decision to cut land purchases, with its share price sliding to its lowest since the days of George Osborne as Chancellor. Investors may be effectively paying 70 pence in the pound for assets at current valuations but with moribund demand and rate cuts possibly heading into reverse, today’s bargain can be tomorrow’s value trap.

L&G (LGEN) rounds out the group, offering an eye-catching dividend yield of almost 9%, though its earnings forecasts aren’t exactly setting the world on fire.
 

Cashing in your chips

The Iran conflict sent oil prices surging and investors duly cashed in, pressing the sell button on BP (BP.) and Shell (SHEL). Good business given their one-year gains of 72% and 39% respectively, with BP the more exposed to a dip in oil prices.

Clean energy plays ITM Power (ITM) and Ceres Power (CWR) have delivered extraordinary gains of 440% and 1,100% respectively over the last year. With neither company yet profitable at scale, investors seem to have decided the easy gains have been made.