Which funds are everyone else buying?

As we wait for the North Pole to melt with all the macho hot air emanating from Trump and Putin in Alaska today, let’s turn our minds to other things, before the stock markets react to emerging news.

This week we published our best-selling funds guide. Signs of some investor nerves can be seen as money market funds appear alongside the more usual contenders of tech, US and large global funds. Less confident investors might like to read up on money market funds which can be a nice way to hold some of your ISA or pension money in cash – and get a decent rate. Most money market funds have returned around 4.6% over the last 12 months.

The most popular Exchange Traded Funds are all still predominantly Team USA, offering low-cost access to both the S&P 500 and tech-heavy Nasdaq 100. The best-selling Investment Trusts are more focussed on income (some renewable energy trusts are offering hefty yields) but I also see private equity play 3i, whose 5-year performance chart looks like a cross-section of Mount Everest - its upward incline is so steep. 3i owns a huge chunk of Dutch discount retailer Action which has done astonishingly well (with some blips) but this is a pretty risky bet, so buyer beware.

The most popular Investment Trust award goes to City of London – a bestseller across all major platforms - whose traditional holdings can loosely be summarised as fags, oil, money, soap and shops! Investors have doubled their money over 5 years in this trust and it’s a solid warhorse. It also pays out a quarterly dividend, and over a year, the income rate is around 4.3%.

From funds to pensions. This week we’ve also launched our brand new workplace pensions hub as we dig deeper into this important space to help employed readers to work out if that pot of money set up for you by your employer is any good. This can be a complex area and we’ve undertaken the HUGE challenge to help people who aren’t actuaries to work it all out.

Massive shout out to Royal London, who were the first group to welcome us in for a rummage through their cupboards and a poke about their pension. These guys are a mutual – owned by their customers – so they tend to be very customer-focussed and have the right motivations. Thanks for your transparency and support.

Part of reviewing any product is hearing what you, the customer, has to say. Before we went live you helped us to gather about 150 reviews of workplace pensions to get the ball rolling – thank you so much to everyone who shared a view. Your voices are a vital part of the ‘value’ conversation and they don’t get heard enough. You can check out what people had to say here – it’s early days and this becomes more powerful the more we get, so please add your experience if you can.

Other weekend reading includes a feature piece on financials (did you know that the sector beat general global shares in the first 6 months of this year?), and more confident investors might value this piece on what we can learn from Q2 earnings in the US vs Europe debate.

It’s over and out from me. We’re taking a little break over the next two weeks and will be back in early September. Thanks for all your continued interest and support – enjoy the sunshine and see you soon!

Holly