Top 10 most-popular investment funds: September 2025

Value-focused, US-light funds Artemis Global Income I Acc and Ranmore Global Equity remained in the ranking of most-bought funds in September, which is based on the number of buys among interactive investor customers, with regular investing excluded.

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The two global funds, ranked third and 10th respectively, are enjoying a turn in the limelight on the back of a shift in market direction from growth to value amid falling interest rates, and as some investors seek to lessen their exposure to the world’s biggest market, thus reducing concentration risk.

As our funds and investment education editor Kyle Caldwell points out, both funds are top performers over multiple time frames, with returns beating the MSCI World index benchmark and peers over one, three and five years. Specialist writer Douglas Chadwick highlighted Ranmore Global Equity as one of only a handful of funds that hurdled “a tough challenge”, delivering gains of at least 5% in each of the last six six-month periods.

Meanwhile, in one of our most-popular articles in September, an ii customer managing a £2.5 million ISA and SIPP portfolio, counts Ranmore Global Equity among his core holdings, while on the ii Community app, investors have created a group called “All things Ranmore”.

In a recent feature shedding light on the hunting ground of value fund managers, Andrew Lapping, chief investment officer at Ranmore Fund Management, said the fund has been reducing exposure this year to Western markets in favour of larger holdings in Asia. As well as investing in South Korea and Japan, with dividend yields on most stocks in the latter country still “exceeding their European counterparts”, Ranmore Global Equity likes London-listed B&M European Value Retail SA (LSE:BME), which has a place among its top 10 holdings.

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In its August fund factsheet, it put the accent on Sally Beauty Holdings Inc (NYSE:SBH), “a ‘small cap’ specialty retailer and distributor of professional beauty supplies through 3,000 stores internationally with a $1.4 billion (£1 billion) market cap”.

It added that “Cost-cutting initiatives…have driven 16% growth in earnings per share (EPS) over the past year. Strong cash generation is facilitating store re-fresh, debt repayment and share repurchases, which should facilitate future growth. Management also believe there are more cost efficiencies to be gained. At the publication of Q3 results in August, they raised their earnings guidance and the share price has rallied 39%.”

In terms of Artemis Global Income, in a commentary published in September, manager Jacob de Tusch-Lec said the world is in the middle of “regime change”, with an investment landscape “vastly different from the quantitative easing (QE) decade between the global financial crisis and the Covid pandemic”. He wonders whether “investors’ portfolios have been adjusted to this new reality” or if many are “still ‘stuck’ with equity portfolios heavy on the winners of the previous decade”.

De Tusch-Lec said: “European banks (as well as banks more generally) have been our largest sector overweight since late 2022” and that the European contingent have more than doubled the return of the Nasdaq over the last three years.

However, plenty of investors remain keen on the US tech success story of the past decade, as the longstanding presence of L&G Global Technology Index in the ranking makes clear. It was in fourth place in September.

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Besides Ranmore Global Equity and Artemis Global Income, the only other actively managed fund in our top 10 in September was Royal London Short Term Money Market fund, which retained first place. The yield on the low-risk, cash-like fund is closely tied to the Bank of England base rate. In September’s meeting, policymakers chose to keep interest rates on hold, at 4%, but the expected direction of travel is downwards, meaning money market funds may become less attractive to some investors as rates fall.

Moving on to the rest of the top 10, the Vanguard LifeStrategy range continues to be popular. The LifeStrategy range is made up of funds investing in index funds and there are a variety of risk levels. For example, Vanguard LifeStrategy 100% Equity, which as its name suggests invests solely in global shares, is ranked seventh in September’s ranking.

Dzmitry Lipski, ii’s head of funds research, recently considered static asset allocation portfolios, such as the classic 60:40 stocks and bonds portfolio, of which Vanguard LifeStrategy 60% Equity fund – in eighth place – is an example. Another example of static allocation in the top 10 table is second-ranked Vanguard LifeStrategy 80% Equity. US fund leviathan Vanguard oversees rebalancing to maintain the stocks to bonds ration of 80:20. 

Lipski spells out the advantages and disadvantages of such holdings. The “main limitation is that they don’t adapt to changing risk environments or incorporate tactical shifts in response to market conditions”. On the upside, however, these equity and bond combinations offer DIY investors simplicity, as well as low costs.

The rest of the top 10 table’s passively managed funds are low-cost global options HSBC FTSE All-World Index,Vanguard FTSE Global All Cap Index, and Fidelity Index World in fifth, sixth and ninth place respectively. All three have very similar one and three-year return figures, as you can see in the table below.

Top 10 most-popular funds in September 2025

Source: interactive investor. Performance data to 1 October 2025. Note: the top 10 is based on the number of “buys” during the month of September. Past performance is not a guide to future performance.

Top 10 most-bought active funds

Precious metals are attracting investors with a new entry, Ninety One Global Gold, appearing in ninth place in the top 10 most-bought active funds’ list in September.

A combination of falling interest rates, sticky inflation, geopolitical crises, and US dollar aversion are attracting investors to the ultimate safe-haven asset of gold, with central bank buying also helped push up the price.

Ninety One Global Gold was ranked 12th in a top 20 list of the best-performing funds in the first half of 2025. Although past performance is no guide to the future, the gold price topped $3,800 this week, a fresh all-time high. However, a fall in inflation or resolution of geopolitical crises, for example, could result in a pullback for the yellow metal.

Among the fund’s top 10 holdings are miners Newmont Corp (NYSE:NEM), Barrick Mining Corp (TSE:ABX), and Anglogold Ashanti (NYSE:AU). Investors can own it for 0.84% a year.

The other commodities fund in the top 10, Jupiter Gold & Silver, rose two places on last month to fourth place. The white metal is a key component in electronics, solar panels, electric vehicle batteries, and renewable energy technology, for example, and is in demand by industry. Silver is more volatile than gold, but cheaper.

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The fund’s ongoing charges figure is 1.01% and among its top 10 holdings are Mexican precious metals group Fresnillo (LSE:FRES), Canada’s Lundin Gold Inc (TSE:LUG) and the US firm Coeur Mining Inc (NYSE:CDE).

Chadwick points out that gold funds are among the top performers in the third quarter of 2025, and ranks Ninety One Global Gold second in his own performance league table. He has also suggested that investors consider diversifying beyond gold into other metals.

As well as Royal London Short Term Money Marketfund’s two shares classes, accumulation and income, represented in the top 10 in first and fifth place respectively, a money market fund from the Vanguard stable has entered the list in 10th place.

The Royal London fund’s yield to maturity is 4.10%, while its yearly fee is 0.10%, according to data timestamped 31 August. Meanwhile, Vanguard Sterling Short-Term Money Marketfund’s current yield to maturity is 3.94%  (as of 19 September), and its charge is 0.12%. 

Top 10 most-bought active funds in September 2025