The most widely held global growth shares among fund managers
Crowded trades are rife among global managers’ top holdings.
29th July 2026 13:23
by Dave Baxter from interactive investor
As Terry Smith and Nick Train can attest, even some of the most experienced money managers are finding it hard to beat the market right now.
A handful of stocks have tended to drive returns – be it the Magnificent Seven in the US or, more recently, names like SK hynix Inc ADR (NASDAQ:SKHY) in the emerging markets.
That makes life tough for an active global equity fund, which is often constrained by diversification rules and unable to back those few names heavily enough.
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In such years, it has been an easy win to just buy a tracker. But whether or not we decide to put our faith in active fund managers, analysing the way they invest can be instructive.
Here we have looked at 20 of the biggest global growth equity funds available to UK retail investors, delved into their top 10 holdings and produced a dataset of the stocks that crop up most often.
This gives a sense of the names that have become popular, which companies you should pay attention to, and what might be crowded trades.
Some of the most widely held names will seem more than familiar, while others could come as more of a surprise.
Our analysis is based on the disclosures from the latest fund factsheets, most of which are from the end of June.
To keep an eye on things, we will update the analysis either quarterly or every half year, depending on how much change we see in the list.
The 20 funds used for our analysis are listed at the bottom of this article.
The favourite stocks
As mentioned before, the Magnificent Seven are an overwhelming presence in global markets and make up around a fifth of the iShares Core MSCI World ETF USD Acc GBP (LSE:SWDA).
But some prominent names, from Fundsmith Equity I Acc (B41YBW7) to WS Blue Whale Growth R Sterling Acc (BD6PG78), have reduced or jettisoned positions in such names on the back of worries about the sheer level of spending on artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure.
However the table, outlining all the names that appeared in at least four of the lists of top holdings we analysed, shows that some companies appear to have shaken off such concerns.
Alphabet Inc Class A (NASDAQ:GOOGL)is phenomenally widely held, appearing as a top 10 holding in 15 of the 20 funds we looked at.
The shares have not performed so badly this year, returning around 5.5%. That compares favourably with Amazon.com Inc (NASDAQ:AMZN), which is broadly flat for 2026, and the losses endured by shareholders in both Meta Platforms Inc Class A (NASDAQ:META) and Microsoft Corp (NASDAQ:MSFT).
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The stock’s sheer popularity means that it appears in funds with very different approaches.
It’s unsurprising that F&C Investment Trust Ord (LSE:FCIT) has it as a top holding, given it doesn’t deviate too much from the underlying market, but the stock picking-focused Alliance Witan Ord (LSE:ALW) also lists it in its top 10.
We also have funds with very different styles listing it as a top holding: growth-focused names such as Blue Whale Growth and Monks Ord (LSE:MNKS) do, but so do more quality-oriented portfolios such as Rathbone Global Opportunities Fund S Acc (BH0P2M9).
On that note, the troubled Lindsell Train Global Equity B GBP Inc (B3NS4D2) lists Alphabet as its top holding on a chunky 9.7% allocation, although this factsheet is to the end of May rather than June.
Magnificent Seven members vary notably by their presence in funds. Amazon is well held, appearing 12 times. NVIDIA Corp (NASDAQ:NVDA) is also widely held, appearing in more than half the top 10 lists we looked at.
Others have lost the crowd to an extent.
Microsoft has lost a few backers in recent years and appears nine times, while Apple Inc (NASDAQ:AAPL), which has refrained from carrying out an AI spending spree, only appears six times.
Apple is the best-performing member of that cohort this year, with the shares up by around a quarter so far in 2026.
Other names are much less prominent. Meta Platforms only appears in three lists of top 10 holdings from our sample.
And in keeping with a long-running trend (once bucked by Scottish Mortgage Ord (LSE:SMT)), Elon Musk’s Tesla Inc (NASDAQ:TSLA) doesn’t crop up at all.
A change of the guard – but still tech
Shares have rallied hard in emerging markets in the last 12 months, and we do see fund managers either jumping on that bandwagon or at least running their winners here.
Emerging market behemoth TSMC, which even Terry Smith bought into this year, appears 11 times, while Korea’s Samsung Electronics Co Ltd DR (LSE:SMSN) and SK Hynix have entered the table after a year of phenomenal share price gains.
This is certainly a bunch of stocks with a lot of momentum. This year so far we’ve seen TSMC shares return around 40%, with Samsung Electronics making almost 70% and SK Hynix on around 22%.
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It’s also worth adding that, while we see some companies jostling for position with the Magnificent Seven, they are almost all viewed as a play on the AI theme.
That’s the case for ASML Holding NV (EURONEXT:ASML), the chipmaker and the only Europe-listed stock in the table, and for Broadcom Inc (NASDAQ:AVGO).
A couple of exceptions do appear in the form of Microsoft and Visa Inc Class A (NYSE:V), the payment processing giants.
Lesser-held names
There’s a long tail of shares that appear as a top 10 holding in just one of the funds we analysed, suggesting that there is still good differentiation between these portfolios.
These range from Ferrari NV (MTA:RACE) in Morgan Stanley UK Global Brands I Acc H (BJNQ8J2) to NextEra Energy Inc (NYSE:NEE) in JPM Global Focus C GBP Acc (BRC2MH3).
Beyond that, a few names do appear in two lists of top holdings.
There’s the newly listed Space Exploration Technologies Corp Class A (NASDAQ:SPCX) in early holders Scottish Mortgage and Monks.
Beyond that there’s Latin American e-commerce play MercadoLibre Inc (NASDAQ:MELI) and Amadeus IT Group SA (XMAD:AMS), which provides software and services for the travel industry.
There’s also Micron Technology Inc (NASDAQ:MU), whose shares have surged in the last year, JPMorgan Chase & Co (NYSE:JPM), Applied Materials Inc (NASDAQ:AMAT), Charles Schwab Corp (NYSE:SCHW), Safran SA (EURONEXT:SAF) and Tencent Holdings Ltd (SEHK:700).
The funds we analysed are listed below:
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