Most popular funds with AJ Bell investors in 2025 revealed
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Investment platform AJ Bell has revealed the most popular funds bought by its DIY (do it yourself) investors in 2025.
The platform said interest in passive funds, which typically replicate the performance of a specific market or index, soared in popularity this year, with tracker funds and ETFs (exchange-traded funds) dominating the top spots.
Passive funds
What is a passive fund?: Passive funds, also known as tracker funds, replicate the performance of specific markets or indexes, like the FTSE 100. Instead of a fund manager actively choosing individual investments, these funds hold the assets of the index they track and mirror its returns. These funds tend to be cheaper than actively-managed funds.
The most popular passive funds were those that provided broad access to companies around the world, AJ Bell said, as well as those providing exposure to gold, the tech sector, or to the UK and US markets.
Active funds
What is an active fund?: Active funds are investment funds managed by a professional fund manager and an investment team who actively pick investments to try to beat a benchmark or index. These tend to have higher fees than passive funds.
For active funds, the ever-popular Vanguard LifeStrategy range continued to dominate. The most popular fund from the range was the 80% equity version, with 20% allocated to bonds.
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