On The Box and 2025 Greatest Hits
By Holly Mackay, Founder & CEO
12 Dec, 2025
The cherry on this week’s large madness cake was appearing on ITV’s Martin Lewis Money Show, which was hot, alarming and fun in equal parts! My dressing room was the Loose Women one and I was next door to the Deputy CEO of the FCA (the industry watchdog, so best behaviour required). And at one point there were even people with painted green faces running around the corridors. I don’t think I was hallucinating…?
We covered investing for beginners and cantered through concepts from shares, bonds, tax, passive funds, crypto, and gold. For those still experiencing mild brainfry after the show (and other readers), our Investing For Beginners course will cover the basics in seven bite-sized steps.
I wish we’d had more time to cover some key points – one of which is that many online Stocks & Shares ISAs let you start with as little as £1. You can see our top picks for investment platforms which let you start with £50 or less here. The first step doesn’t need to be a big one!
Greatest Hits of 2025
As we start to edge into Christmas (#notready!), thoughts turn to 2025 summaries and round-ups. I’ve asked the Boring Money elves to dig into the best-selling funds of the year.
Six funds have appeared on multiple investment platforms’ best-selling lists every month so far in 2025. So, what are this year’s most popular chart toppers?
Fidelity Index World – Your greatest hits album if the theme is global shares – a very cheap way to buy about 1,300 of the world’s largest companies in one go, pre-wrapped into one single investment product which costs about £1.20 a year for every £1,000 invested here. You will pay platform fees too – the fund is the album and the platform is Spotify.
HSBC FTSE All-World Index – A similar global greatest hits with over 3,000 companies and emerging markets too, so you get exposure to India, China and Brazil too, for example. A better bet for people worried about having tooooo much exposure to the US.
Legal & General Global Technology Index – Super cheap and easy way to access a single playlist of around 250 global technology shares.
Royal London Short Term Money Market – An easy way to get cash-like behaviour and stability inside a tax-efficient ISA, good to sit in if you get the heebie-jeebies about stock markets being a bit overcooked, so want to have some money in less risky stuff. Has returned about 4% this year. Here’s an idea. Worried about investing a lump sum at the wrong time? You could divide your money into 10 lots, stick 9 lots in the Money Market fund, invest 1 lot now, and every month drip-feed into markets by swapping 1 lot out of the Money Market fund into a spicier shares fund?
Vanguard FTSE Global All Cap Index – Another greatest hits, but this one is super diversified and spread around. It has shares in about 7,000–8,000 companies with a small dollop in smaller companies, about 10% in emerging markets, and slightly less in the US than some peers – a bit pricier than some trackers but still really good value – about £2.30 a year for every £1,000 invested here.
Vanguard LifeStrategy 100% Equity – This one is for those who like their British bands. With about 20% - 25% invested in the UK, it’s less exposed to the US than other compilation albums. This has hurt relative returns this year, but could reap rewards if there is a big US tech correction at any point.
If you’re a total beginner and want one of these global options to start out, and you have a small amount today, you could look at platforms Hargreaves Lansdown or AJ Bell, which are big, solid, mainstream choices which will let you buy funds and won’t cost a lot for a small amount. If you’ve not used a Stocks & Shares ISA yet, these are typically the no-brainer starting point for most of us.
More confident readers might be interested in the most popular Investment Trusts, which include:
Greencoat UK Wind – A collection of about 49 wind farms wrapped up into one investment product – its popularity is less about people thinking that wind is the new AI (!) and more because it pays out chunky dividends of around 10% a year – warning: volatile share price!
Scottish Mortgage – This is like skinny jeans – was really fashionable 5 years ago, became unfashionable for a few years as performance wobbled and is now back in favour. Interesting for those with long timeframes who want to access interesting picks, which are less mainstream than the usual Big Dogs and might be tomorrow’s Big Dogs. Includes things like Zipline (US-based drone delivery company), SpaceX and ByteDance (TikTok’s parent). Also volatile!
The final things in the elves’ best-selling sack are some ETFs including the Invesco NASDAQ 100 UCITS (ignore the mumbo jumbo name – a cheap way to hold 100 of the US’s biggest tech stocks) and the iShares Physical Gold fund (a cheap way to invest in gold without having a panic attack because it’s hidden under the cereal box in your kitchen). Gold’s had a glittering year, so prices are high – don’t get too giddy. I’d say this shouldn’t be more than 5% of a diversified portfolio.
Phew. That’s my round-up of the chart toppers for the year. Talking of which, I’m hugely pleased that my ‘Spotify age’ is 27. Which is all to do with how bleeding-edge cool I am and nothing to do with the fact that I share the account with my teen.
Have a great weekend, everyone. I have a teen invasion at my house tonight and an ill-prepared Christmas party. Wish me luck!
Holly
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