Top 10 most-purchased ETFs: October 2025

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Commodity funds and racier tech plays continued to jostle for space with more “vanilla” exchange-traded funds (ETFs) in our October bestsellers list. Our monthly tables are based on the number of buys, with regular investing excluded.

The same 10 ETFs (including different share classes of the same funds) from September’s list made the cut this time round, with funds focused on precious metals ranking highly in our table.

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The iShares Physical Gold ETC GBP (LSE:SGLN) remains at the top of the table, while its silver equivalent, iShares Physical Silver ETC GBP (LSE:SSLN), rose to second place. A Global X fund focused on silver miner shares fell slightly, to eighth place.

The total return figures in the table do much to explain the popularity of such names, with the two ETCs (which track the spot price of the relevant metal) roughly neck and neck by their substantial 12-month returns.

Gold is viewed as a safe haven in times of geopolitical uncertainty, although investors might turn to other defensive assets after such big gains.

The Global X Silver Miners ETF USD Acc GBP (LSE:SILG) has produced even bigger numbers than the ETCs, reflecting the fact that buying mining shares can come with greater gains, and greater potential losses, than simply taking exposure to movements in the metal’s price.

It also likely reflects the big bets taken in this portfolio: Wheaton Precious Metals Corp (LSE:WPM) accounted for around 15% of the portfolio at the end of October, with Pan American Silver Corp (NYSE:PAAS) on 12.2% and Coeur Mining Inc (NYSE:CDE) on 10.3%. Among other holdings, it has a 5% allocation to UK-listed high-flyer Fresnillo (LSE:FRES).

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With gold and silver prices hitting fresh highs in October, plenty have asked how much more momentum these metals, and the companies that mine them, have left.

The risk of a pullback was illustrated by the gold price suffering a 5% fall in a single day last month.

Elsewhere, investors are still backing a racy outperformer in the form of the VanEck Crypto&Blckchan Innovtr ETF A USD GBP (LSE:DAGB).

The fund, which moved up to sixth place in October and has made an 82.1% gain in a 12-month period, had an 8% allocation to top holding IREN Ltd (NASDAQ:IREN) at the end of October, with 6.8% in BitMine Immersion Technologies Inc (AMEX:BMNR), 6.7% in Applied Digital Corp (NASDAQ:APLD) and 6.4% in Coinbase Global Inc Ordinary Shares - Class A (NASDAQ:COIN).

Past performance demonstrates the sheer volatility of this fund: it lost 84.1% in 2022, only to return more than 250% the following year.

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Meanwhile, investors continued to buy into the world’s biggest companies via ETFs of different stripes.

There’s the tech-heavy Invesco EQQQ NASDAQ-100 ETF GBP (LSE:EQQQ), which stayed in seventh place and had 10.3% of its assets in NVIDIA Corp (NASDAQ:NVDA) at the end of October. Other top holdings include the remaining Magnificent Seven members, as well as Broadcom Inc (NASDAQ:AVGO) and Netflix Inc (NASDAQ:NFLX).

Some investors are taking a slightly more sedate form of this exposure, via the global and US ETFs, which are better diversified but also a Magnificent Seven-heavy affair.

As the table shows, that has continued to pay off over a 12-month period, even if widely followed US and global indices have trailed other regions (such as the emerging markets and Europe) in sterling terms for 2025.

There’s plenty of nuance among the most popular “vanilla” options in this list. Note that one MSCI World fund makes the list but two share classes of a FTSE All-World ETF, which is still US-heavy but has some limited exposure to emerging markets, crop up.

This suggests investors are more aware of the need to diversify beyond the US, and possibly also to get some exposure to resurgent markets such as China. The FTSE All-World ETF in question is fractionally cheaper, with a yearly fee of 0.19% versus the 0.2% on the MSCI World tracker in the list.

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Different share classes of the same ETFs sit alongside one another in the table, and it’s worth noting the presence of the “distributing” share classes of both the Vanguard S&P 500 UCITS ETF GBP (LSE:VUSA) and the Vanguard FTSE All-World UCITS ETF GBP (LSE:VWRL).

Distributing (or income) share classes will pay out any dividends received to the investor, while an accumulating (or growth) share class will reinvest these.

The popularity of distributing share classes on these particular funds is eye-catching, given that the S&P 500 and US-heavy global indices tend not to generate much in the way of dividends.

The Vanguard FTSE All-World ETFs’ distributing share class came with a yield of just 1.4% at the end of September.

Top 10 most popular ETFs in October

Source: FE Analytics. Performance data to 31 October 2025. Note: the top 10 is based on the number of “buys” during the month of October. Past performance is not a guide to future performance.