Did fund managers back the top-performing FTSE 100 stocks of 2025?

It has been another impressive year for UK shares, with blue chips offering especially big rewards for investors.

The FTSE 100 had returned around 24% for 2025 as at 18 December, a strong showing even in a year marked by big gains for equities around the world.

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Source: FE Analytics, 18/12/2025. Past performance is not a guide to future performance.

Unsurprisingly, a handful of shares have posted some outsize gains, and these come from multiple different sectors. The big returns for the likes of gold and silver have helped miners such as Fresnillo (LSE:FRES), Endeavour Mining (LSE:EDV) and Antofagasta (LSE:ANTO) post huge gains but we also see a few other examples.

There’s Rolls-Royce Holdings (LSE:RR.), which has had good operational performance for another year.

It, alongside Babcock International Group (LSE:BAB), has also posted huge gains thanks to its association with the theme of increased defence spending. Separately, an idiosyncratic success story has been Airtel Africa Ordinary Shares (LSE:AAF).

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Meanwhile, Prudential (LSE:PRU), Lloyds Banking Group (LSE:LLOY), Standard Chartered (LSE:STAN) and Barclays (LSE:BARC) also stood out, showcasing the success of the financials sector in the last year.

With UK shares continuing to fly high, many funds have managed to capitalise on this. But how many of them are holding the top stocks of 2025?

Niche shares stay niche

A name like Fresnillo might have posted big gains but it’s still a specialist and racy play. The shares have returned more than 350% in 2025 to mid-December, but longstanding shareholders might also remember that they fell by more than 30% back in 2023.

And mining, as ever, remains a volatile sector. As such, it seems unsurprising that the top UK equity funds are not taking big bets here.

We looked at 15 of the best-performing funds from the Investment Association (IA) and Association of Investment Companies (AIC) UK All Companies and UK Equity Income sectors for 2025 (as at early December).

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Our sample included Temple Bar Ord (LSE:TMPL), Artemis SmartGARP UK Eq I Acc GBP, Shires Income Ord (LSE:SHRS), Fidelity Special Values Ord (LSE:FSV), Lowland Ord (LSE:LWI), Ninety One UK Special Situations B Acc and the iShares UK Dividend ETF GBP Dist (LSE:IUKD), among others.

A look at recent top 10 holdings for all these funds show that none of them had big positions in Fresnillo, Endeavour Mining or Antofagasta. Babcock and Airtel Africa were also absent from the top 10 holding lists.

That’s perhaps unsurprising and reassuring, given that these are mainly quite niche stocks.

Big bets remain

However, our sample is heavily exposed to financials. As our table shows, there are numerous top-performing funds with at least 30% of their portfolio dedicated to the sector.

Meanwhile, Lloyds crops up in the top 10 holding lists for eight of the funds in our 15-strong sample. Barclays appears in seven of the top 10 lists, with Standard Chartered appearing four times and Prudential just once.

Source: fund factsheets.

The financials exposure has much to say for itself, given that the sector has performed so well this year. The FTSE All-Share Financials index has returned almost 40% to mid-December in 2025 (versus around 20.5% for the FTSE All-Share itself).

A combination of buybacks, higher interest rates and structural hedges have helped the banks to achieve huge profits, while insurers continue to lure investors in thanks to impressive dividend yields among other things.

This may well long continue, with fund managers such as Fidelity’s Alex Wright and City of London’s Job Curtis arguing that financials will keep delivering the goods.

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But it’s worth noting that some funds are especially exposed, from Artemis SmartGARP UK Equity and Artemis UK Select to Aberdeen Equity Income, the yield-chasing iShares UK Dividend ETF, Shires Income and City of London itself.

By contrast, a couple of names have relatively low exposure. One of these, the value-oriented Ninety One UK Special Situations, has delivered good returns in recent years.

This fund is a bit more diversified on the sector front, with 24.1% in industrials, 23% in consumer discretionary shares, 20.7% in financials and 18.4% in consumer staples.

That’s not to say the investment team avoids big bets: the fund has just 33 holdings and is still going big on Rolls-Royce, which accounts for 8.5% of the portfolio.

Which stocks are crowded trades?

Some shares are stalwarts of the market, but fund managers crowd around some names more than other. This can be seen from our sample: 10 of the 15 funds featured HSBC Holdings (LSE:HSBA) in their top 10 holdings list, with nine featuring Lloyds and eight featuring GSK (LSE:GSK). Big oil is not absent either with BP (LSE:BP.) and Shell (LSE:SHEL) each appearing six times.

If we look back at shares such as Fresnillo, investors have to use some pretty niche funds (outside our list of top performers) to get a decent level of exposure.

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Some commodity funds such as Jupiter Gold & Silver I GBP Acc include Fresnillo in their top 10 lists, while a mixture of different funds including RBC Emerging Markets, Schroder UK Alpha Plus Z Acc and even the value-focused WS Lightman European R Acc feature Antofagasta in their top 10 lists.

Babcock, meanwhile, features in the top 10 of Invesco UK Eq High Inc UK Z Inc and Invesco UK Equity Inc UK Z Inc. Prudential is a top 10 holding for many funds outside our sample, including Royal London Sustainable Leaders C Acc.