Hi, we're Andrea and Jamie, two millennial investors and qualified accountants that are here to help you become more confident about the world of investing in finance. We want to give a disclaimer that we are not financial advisors, nothing in this podcast should be treated as financial advice, this is for educational purposes only. When investing, your capital is at risk and the value of your investments may rise and fall.
We'd like to thank our sponsor Trading 212 for helping us to bring you this episode. Trading 212 is an investing platform which aims to democratise investing, and it's also the platform that we trust with our stocks in shares' ices. But more on that a little bit later on. I remember back when we first started investing, we dove headfirst into buying shares of individual companies. An approach that was more complex, time-consuming, and ultimately lost us a lot of money at the beginning.
In reality, we should have started by investing in funds, which are baskets of stocks that might have 30,000 or 3,000 companies in them. Because having these diversified investments would have reduced our risk while we built up our knowledge and confidence.
But even when it comes to funds, there are so many to choose from. So today we'll be looking at 10 of the most popular ETFs and managed funds in the UK so you can see some of the different options out there. We've got 5 ETFs and 5 managed funds. So let's kick off with ETFs.
But first, what are ETFs? An ETF, or exchange traded fund, is like a basket of investments, such as stocks, bonds, or commodities, that you can buy and sell on the stock market just as easily as you can buy or sell shares of companies.
They tend to be less expensive than managed funds because ETFs are usually passively managed, meaning they will simply track and try to match the performance of a certain area of the stock market rather than employing a bunch of analysts and fund managers to try and outperform it. I should put a little asterisk saying that ETFs can also be managed so that they can be managed funds, but in general, you'll find that most ETFs do take this more passive approach of tracking a stock market index.
This approach has proved immensely popular, with the global ETF market being worth over $10 trillion. That's right, $10 trillion, not even billion. As more and more people seem to fall out of love with the managed fund industry, which has a habit of underperforming the broader market while charging higher fees.
So let's get on to five of the most popular ETFs in the UK. And we've decided to look at the five most popular ones on trading two, one, two as like our barometer. So let's get into it. We'll start with the most popular ETF, which is the Vanguard S&P 500 ticker symbol V USA. So that's the name that you'll find on trading two, one, two, but its full name is actually Vanguard S&P 500 uses ETF USD. That's really catchy.
Yeah, I wonder why they didn't use all of that. But yeah, that's a lot of jargon, isn't it? So let's quickly break it down. So the first word is Vanguard, which is the ETF provider. Then we have SMP 500, the name of the index that the ETF is tracking, which is the leading stock market index in the United States. USITS, spelled UCITS, is just an acronym for an EU regulatory framework.
ETF stands for exchange traded fund. But if you've been a regular listener of the podcast, you should know that. USD is the currency of the S&P 500 index, the US dollar. This stands for distributing, meaning any dividends received from the fund will be paid to US cash.
The opposite is ACK or Accumulating, which are funds that will automatically reinvest any dividends back into the fund, and this can accelerate growth, but some people just prefer to take their dividends and I guess spend them? I don't know. Finally, the ticker symbol VUSA is simply a reference code to identify this particular ETF.
Okay, so that's the fun name broken down, but Vanguard S&P 500 uses ETF USD DIST. So what does this fund actually do? Well, it's a great option for those looking to invest in the US stock market. This ETF tracks the S&P 500 index, which is a collection of 500 medium and large companies in the United States. Think big names like Apple, Microsoft, Nvidia, Amazon and Meta. They're all included and make up a big chunk of the ETF.
By tracking the S&P 500, this ETF aims to mirror the performance of those top 500 companies.
It's worth mentioning that this index is market capitalization weighted, which simply means that bigger companies have a bigger impact on the performance. For example, Apple and Vidya, Microsoft, Amazon, Meta, which is Facebook and Alphabet, which is Google, make up almost one third of the ETF. So if you invest in this index fund, a third of your money is going into those companies alone.
In terms of costs, this is one of the cheapest ETFs out there, with an expense ratio of just 0.07%. This means for every 10,000 pounds you invest, you'll only pay 7 pounds in fun fees each year.
Finally, its performance. This fund has returned 13.8% per year over the past five years, driven by the incredible performance of the US stock market, and in particular big tech companies such as Apple and Nvidia. We will be mentioning the five year returns of all the funds today, so it's worth reiterating now that past performance doesn't guarantee future results, and just because a fund performed well in the past doesn't mean it will perform well in the future,
And similarly, if a fund has performed badly in the past, it doesn't mean it will perform badly in the future. But this is more just to get an idea of how these funds have done over the last five years. So that's the most popular ETF on training 212, the Vanguard S&P 500, this ticker symbol VUSA. However, now we're going to put you to the test in terms of seeing how you can differentiate funds, because the second and fourth most popular funds were very similar. So we've just included them in the same category.
The second most popular fund is the Vanguard S&P 500 ACK ticker symbol VUAG. The only difference here is the fact that this ETF is accumulating what the ACK stands for rather than distributing, which is why the previous ETF had dissed in the name.
This means any dividends received by companies within this fund are automatically reinvested, meaning you'll see a higher absolute return but won't receive any cash dividends. That's why this fund has returned an average of 15.4% per year over the past five years, whereas the distributing one returned 13.8% per year.
because the distributing one paid its dividends to you as cash, and so they're not reinvested and they're not constantly growing, but the accumulating one kept dividends within the fund, which helped it to have this higher overall return. But admittedly, that 13.8% year, if the other one doesn't include the impact of dividends, so you could argue that if you really wanted to see how the S&P 500 has performed and how these funds have performed, you should take into account the accumulating one because those dividends are there.
This just gives you a number that takes them into account. It's known as the total return. Finally, the fourth most popular fund that also tracks the S&P 500 is the iShares Core S&P 500 AC, ticker symbol SXR8. This ETF is basically the same, but the provider is different. It's provided by iShares, who are owned by BlackRock rather than Vanguard. It's worth mentioning that all of these ETFs have the same expense ratio of 0.07%, which is probably the cheapest we're going to hear.
OK, so we've actually adjusted the rest of this list to remove those second and fourth most popular ETFs because they are virtually the same as the first one. They all track the S&P 500. So let's continue down our slightly amended list.
The second most popular fund is the Vanguard Footseal World Act ticker symbol, VWRP. This ETF is another index fund, meaning it takes a hands-off approach and simply tries to copy the returns of a certain part of the stock market, known as an index. But the index this ETF is tracking is called the Footseal World Index. The Footseal World Index includes over 4,000 companies from 45 developed and emerging countries, allowing you to spread your investments across different countries and sectors.
It's still weighted towards the US because a lot of these index funds will be more impacted by the larger companies and US businesses are still the biggest in the world. So those seven big tech companies we mentioned earlier still make up a big portion of the CTF. The good news for those looking to be more diversified is that they only make up 20% of this global ETF, whereas they made up more like 33% of the S&P 500 ETF earlier.
Woohoo, that reciprocation. Truth is, this is why our personal preference is to invest in an ETF that tracks the footseal world index. We don't mind the fact that over 60% of the ETF's performance is driven by US stocks, because it is probably the world's strongest stock market and economy, but it's nice to spread our risk so we aren't solely relying on the US. This fund also returned 11.4% per year over the past five years, so still pretty strong, but less than those S&P 500 funds that we looked at earlier.
Now, we don't actually invest in this specific ETF for one reason, the fee. This fund has an expense ratio of 0.22%, which honestly, that's not bad at all. We just stopped for the Invesco FTSE All World ETF because it has a slightly lower expense ratio of just 0.15%. But it's also been around for less time, meaning it has less of a track record of actually tracking the FTSE All World Index.
Moving on to the third most popular ETF and we have the iShares S&P 500 Information Technology Act, ticker symbol IITU. Now if you wanted to invest in a US index like the S&P 500 but thought that you weren't getting enough technology, then good news. This ETF tracks the S&P 500 capped 3520 Information Technology Index.
which focuses specifically on technology companies within the S&P 500. Its top holdings are Apple, Nvidia, Microsoft, Broadcom, and Salesforce, which means the technology index doesn't include Amazon, Meta, Google, or Tesla, which is interesting.
Yeah, it's quite interesting. I actually feel like we've been asked a bit on Instagram. I think a couple of times someone's asked like, I want to invest in like an ETF or a big tracker, but I don't want to hold Tesla or Amazon for kind of like ethical reasons. And I was kind of looking at it. I was like, well, that's not going to exist.
Apparently, something kind of does exist. I mean, fine, you still have the focus on technology, or it's not really as diversified as any other index funds, but yeah, it's interesting to see. Now, if you thought the S&P 500 was weighted heavily towards larger companies, with Big Tech making up a third of its holdings, just wait till you hear this.
Apple alone accounts for 21% of the ETF, with both Nvidia and Microsoft accounting for over 18% each. So that's over half of this ETF invested in just three companies. Not exactly great for diversification, so I guess it could be maybe a smaller part of one's portfolio?
However, that lack of diversification can pay off when the technology sector is performing particularly well as it has done over the past five years. That's helped this fund to deliver an average return of 24% per year since 2020 with a lot of help from NVIDIA's stellar performance. In terms of costs, once again, it's pretty cheap. An expense ratio of just 0.15%, which is higher than the expense ratios for the S&P 500 index ETFs, but still very reasonable for a sector-specific ETF.
Now the fourth most popular ETF is something a bit different. The iShares physical gold ETC ticker symbol SGLN which lets you track the price of gold. It's an exchange traded commodity. ETC, which is like an ETF, but it tracks the price of a commodity, in this case, gold. This ETC is physically backed, meaning it holds actual gold bars in secure vaults. Fancy.
The iShares physical gold ETC aims to follow the price of gold in US dollars. Gold is often considered a safe haven asset, meaning it tends to hold its value when the economy gets shaky, which is why experts often recommend to include it in a diversified portfolio, albeit only as a small amount. We currently don't have any gold in our portfolios, although we did buy a 250-pound gold coin recently. Yeah, that was pretty cool.
It's fair to say that the world has been a bit shaky over the past five years, which is probably another statement. A pandemic, wars, inflation, all things that should send investors heading to a safe haven like gold. While stocks still soared in this time, gold also did alright, with this fund returning an average of 11.2% over the past five years. I think gold in general over the past 40 years has had an average annual return of about 10%.
which is really good, but I think it does tend to go through cycles of booms and busts just because of the safe haven feature that it has. Once again, this is not an expensive fund with an expense ratio of just 0.12%, a common theme amongst these exchange-traded funds and commodities.
The final ETF we're going to look at is one that we've actually had in our portfolio at some point in the past, the iShares Global Clean Energy ETF, which focuses on the clean energy sector. It tracks the S&P Global Clean Energy Index, which includes companies involved in renewable energy, energy efficiency, and other clean energy related activities. The top holdings include first solar, SSE, Iberdrola, and phase energy and VISTAs wind systems.
Now, clean energy tends to be one of those investing trends that comes and goes with ETFs like this having a habit of experiencing booms and busts. I think a lot more severely than the gold ETF that you mentioned earlier. Yeah, maybe booms and busts wasn't necessarily the right phrasing for gold, but it does tend to go through cycles, I guess. Whereas this one is very much booms and busts.
Yeah, I mean, the last five years have been disappointing for investors in this ETF, without delivering an average return of minus 1.7% per year, during a time where stocks in general have performed very well.
You even get to pay more for the privilege, with this being our most costly ETF of the bunch, charging an expense ratio of 0.65%. This is higher than a lot of other ETFs, but ETFs that cover a specialized theme, known as thematic ETFs, often have higher costs due to their specialized focus.
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All right, so those were five of the most popular ETFs that we have in the UK. But what about other types of funds? Specifically, we're going to be looking at some managed funds. We tried to kind of try to deliver above average returns thanks to their fund managers and team of analysts, but charge a higher fee for doing so. To be honest, I mean, you've heard some of the returns of these passive funds. I mean, market returns were like average returns tend to be pretty good still.
Yeah, exactly. So I guess we'll see if these these funds are managed to beat their targets. Now, we've taken our top five most popular managed funds from two sources, how Greece lands down and fund caliber. And these tend to be quite interesting to look at because there are all sorts of different approaches and ideas and results. So let's kick off our list.
The first fund is arguably the one I feel most interested in. The Jupiter India fund? This fund is managed by Avinash Vasirani and aims to outperform the MSCI India Index by investing in a diverse range of Indian companies.
This fund uses a growth at a reasonable price approach, seeking companies in India with strong growth potential and reasonable valuations. Some of the top holdings in the fund include tobacco company Godfrey Phillips India, the State Bank of India and healthcare provider Fortis Healthcare.
Now we mentioned the MSCI India Index and these benchmark indexes are exactly how managed funds are judged. Their performance versus a predetermined benchmark. That's because you might be able to simply invest in an index fund that tracks the MSCI India Index if you wanted to invest in Indian stocks.
But the argument for managed funds is that, especially with emerging markets like this, the specialist knowledge of the fund manager and their team will deliver returns that exceed the index that they are benchmarking themselves against.
In this case, the fund has been doing a pretty impressive job. Over the past five years, the MSCI India Index has returned an average of 12.6% per year, but this fund has returned an average of 17.3% per year, which absolutely smashes the benchmark.
So fair play. I think that we often knock managed funds because on average they do tend to underperform their benchmarks in the long run whilst charging expensive fees to do so. But clearly there are some very good funds out there as well.
You know, I think Train 2 and 2 as well, when I looked at the top 10, maybe it wasn't top 10, maybe it was top 15, most like popular ETFs. I think there was one tracking the MSCI in the eye as well. So clearly, in the eye is quite a hotspot, I guess, for stock market returns at the minute.
But what about the fees? Honestly, they aren't crazy. This fund has ongoing charges of 0.69%, meaning it will charge you £69 a year for every £10,000 you have invested. That's almost the same as the iShares Global Clean Energy ETF we looked at earlier, and obviously you get a lot better value for money with this one. Or at least you definitely have in the last five years. Yeah, because of the returns that are much greater.
And perhaps even more surprising is that you can invest in the iShares MSCI India ETF, tech symbol IIND, for example, on train two on two, which simply tracks the MSCI India index, the one that is fund is benchmarked against. But that ETF also charges 0.65%.
The only downside is that not only investing platforms offer these managed funds. And once that do, such as Hargreaves Lansdowne can have higher fees or more complex fee structures. Exactly. So the fees that we mentioned earlier were just solely the fund fees. I don't know exactly what any additional fees charged by Hargreaves Lansdowne would be for investing in this particular fund, because as we say, they are complex. They can differ from funds to fund. But yeah, the
Fairly, relatively cheap cost for this managed fund is solely the charge that the fund will charge. There may be other ones by investment providers. If you'd like a breakdown of all the fees that you have to pay when investing, listen to episode 58 of our podcast.
But overall, this is a fund that is really impressed over the past five years by investing in one of the most, or at least in my opinion, one of the most attractive emerging economies in the world. Yeah, but the question is, is it now overvalued? Because I feel like a lot of people are excited about the Indian stock market in the minute. It's like, you know, have we missed the boat on that?
I mean, probably not. Yeah, probably. I mean, if it is going to be an emerging economy that does end up growing in, well, India has a lot of room to grow. It has a huge population. I think the population is still growing, which is very important in emerging economies.
I just, it feels like it has a lot going for it. There's, I'm no expert. Okay. I'm going to put that out there. I say it has a lot going for it. I'm no expert, but just the snippets that I've seen seem to imply that there's just plenty there for growth. But, you know, it's, it's not straightforward as with any emerging economy, you know, there, there are
going to be bumps in the road. But yeah, I was certainly back in the years economy for the next 10, 20 years. But we will see. Next up on our list is the Rathbone Global Opportunities Fund, which, as the name suggests, invests in stocks around the world, primarily in the US, UK, and Europe, seeking long-term growth. It aims to outperform the IA global sector, which follows the performance of a bunch of investment funds that invest globally.
The fund does aim to outperform this by investing in a concentrated portfolio of 50 to 60 carefully selected global companies with a focus on businesses with strong growth potential and resilient business models. Basically, those don't get weathered economic storms.
The top five holdings in the fund are NVIDIA, Costco, Amphenol, Microsoft, and Syntus. And honestly, the criteria this fund has for picking stocks sounds like something we would look for. So it might be worth us looking at the holdings of this fund to try and get some inspiration for our own portfolios, perhaps.
But is this fund any good? Well, it's certainly been outperforming its benchmark. The Rathbone Global Opportunities Fund has delivered average returns of 11.4% per year over the past five years, whereas its benchmark, the IA Global Sector, has only returned 9%.
However, it's worth noting that the FTSE All World Index Fund that we invest in, which holds thousands of investments from across the world, also returned 11.4% over the past five years. Whilst it may not be the benchmark for this fund, the idea around global diversification is broadly similar.
The only difference is that our Invesco FTSE All World ETF only has a fee of 0.15%, whereas this Rathbong Global Opportunities Fund has an annual fee of 0.51%. So just kind of swapped around. Again, that's not too high a fee for a managed fund, but while it has successfully outperformed its benchmark, it has an outperform a FTSE All World ETF. I guess it helps to be selective about the benchmark you compare your fund to, huh? Yeah, exactly.
I need to look into, I'm not entirely sure how benchmarks are selected. I don't know if the fund manager says, oh, this is a benchmark we aim to be, or is, I don't know, something more broadly looks at the type of investments within a managed fandom. They're like, OK, you're most similar to this benchmark.
It's probably a bit of a combination of the two. I guess you can't really go for really strong performing growth stocks. I'm trying to outperform the Bank of England bond rate or whatever it is. There are some rules about appropriate benchmarking.
Next up on the list of popular managed funds, we have the Artemis Global Income Fund, which focuses on global stocks that pay dividends. Best to be expected for any fund with income in the name. You would assume that the purpose of the fund is to provide some form of cash flow into your portfolio, in this case in the form of dividends.
The fund aims to grow both the dividends you receive and the value of your investment in the fund over the long term, with investments in a mixture of company shares and bonds across the globe. Its top holdings include Japanese company Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, US Tech Giant Oracle and the German Commerce Bank AG, so quite a mix of companies.
but it does have a focus on generating income, mostly via dividends, and the fund has a historic dividend yield of about 3.25%. This means if you had invested £10,000 in the fund at the start of 2024, you would have received £325 in dividends throughout the year.
Now, when we were doing the research for this, we saw that his benchmark was the MSCI ACWI NRGBP, which honestly looks like someone just had butted the keyboard a few times. But it turns out, it's simply a global benchmark that measures the performance of stocks across both developed and emerging markets, including dividends after taxes. So, how has the fund performed against this alphabeti spaghetti of a benchmark?
Yeah, I think it's called, I think it's called alpha betty or alphabets. I don't know. Is that like the like soups? Yeah, it's kind of like soups, but you have like spaghetti. I guess I kind of like spaghetti, but they're in the shape of letters.
You know, we didn't really have that in Romania. I think maybe we had it once, like those, like, you know, soups that you get in packets. Mm-hmm. So, kind of like, almost like carbon noodles, but, you know? A cup of soup. Or what are they called? A cup of soup, yeah, kind of like that. And I think they introduced it with, yeah, letters and everything. That was cool. Well, and yeah, and you could pick out, like, 10 or 11 random letters and come up with the name of the benchmark for this font. Yeah, that's what everyone does, right? Exactly.
But yeah, if we look at how the fund has performed against its alphabet spaghetti, well, it has slightly outperformed it over the past five years, returning 11.5% versus the benchmark return of 11.3%. However, and this is always something to remember, these returns do not take into account the impact of fees charged by the fund, which is important because it's usually a lot cheaper to find an index ETF that tracks one of these benchmarks.
In this case, the fund has ongoing charges of 0.87%, which, ding ding ding, we have a winner for the most expensive fund of the episode so far. If you did dark this cost from its average returns versus its benchmark, the fund would have underperformed.
Just wanted to check quickly what dividend yield and return is for the Vanguard FTSE All World High dividend yield ETF, which is basically a sample of the FTSE All World Index, but it selects companies that pay a higher dividend yield than average because I'm pretty sure it's
probably around the same performance and probably it's similar yield. So, okay, so as of 31st of December, 2024, the Vanguard FTSE old world high dividend yield ETF ticker symbol V-H-Y-L had a dividend yield of 3.15%. So it's quite close to this, right? And then in terms of their return,
So in the last five years, it's gone up by around, I don't know, 35%. So I think that would be like a 6% compound annual growth, maybe. But that's when you get the return in the US dollars. I think they're measuring it. So I don't know how compared to pounds. It would probably be a higher return in pounds.
Now, as with all of these funds, a big reason to investing them is because either one, you like the fund managers and believe in their ability, two, you believe the funds approach is the best one, or three, you believe these funds will perform better during the bad times, because you know, the odds are not in their favor during the good times.
All of these may be true for some funds, none of them will be true for others. So perhaps you like the idea of a managed fund trying to bring you some dividends from hand-picked companies across the globe, or maybe you're happy to trust an ETF. Honestly, there's no right or wrong answer. But sadly, this fund doesn't appear to have delivered to investors over the past five years. It hasn't done terribly, and I definitely want to highlight that, they're probably far worse performing funds out there tracking the same benchmark or with similar goals.
But after fees, it hasn't beaten its benchmark. Moving on to the Penultimate Fund of the episode, and it is another dividend-focused one, the Fidelity Global Dividend Fund, which also aims to grow the value of your investments while providing a growing income stream in the form of dividends. Once again, it invests in dividend-paying stocks or companies from across the world, and focuses on companies with strong fundamentals and sustainable dividend policies.
This basically means well-run businesses with strong business models and finances that look like they'll be able to pay their dividends for years and years to come. Some of the top holdings in this fund include UK consumer goods giant Unilever, stock marketplace organizer Deutsche Borsen, and reinsurance provider MUNKANO. How do I pronounce this?
Should I try? I will not try. And we sure as provider, Mjunkenar is something something, A.G. Honestly, this is the longest word I've ever seen. Munshana Rook's first shigerung's gessetled shaft. A.G. Okay. Yeah, that one.
I need to get my brother or my mum in here. They both did a bit of German. Well, my mum did a degree in German, so I feel like I feel like saying she's done a bit of German. It's slightly understating it. But yeah, I have no idea. Again, that looks like someone's had better to keyboard a few times. That's like that really long train station in Wales. Yeah. Yeah. Which is called something probably starting in class. Yes, it is.
Now, I'm not going to lie, when researching this, there was different performance data on a few different websites, but I'm going to go with the figures on Fidelity's website, which show the fund delivering an average return of 8.42% to investors over the past five years, including the impact of dividends, which is possibly the lowest return we've seen so far in this episode. Actually, no, make that the second lowest. The worst was a clean energy ETF. Yeah, that was terrible. I mean, that's a negative return. Yeah, in five years, where stocks have been on fire.
But that return does be the benchmark, the return of the fidelity global dividend fund that is, where the benchmark return an average of 7.77% per year over the same time period. However, it's not something to celebrate too much because we have to look at fees once again. And once again, we have a winner of the most expensive fund of the episode award, QD applause. That was so underwhelming. Sorry, I've been watching golf too much.
Anyway, the fidelity global dividend fund charges 0.91% per year in fees. And once again, deducting this from the return of the fund, you've got another underperformer.
So that brings us on to our final fund for the episode and after a couple of performances, can we end on a high with the JP Morgan US Equity Income Fund? Which, yes, if you haven't guessed by the fact it has income in the name, focuses on high quality US companies with a history of paying dividends.
Well, we love our dividends in the UK, don't we? Everyone loves dividends. The top holdings in this fund include Microsoft, energy company Chevron, and railroad company Norfolk 7, which really bugs me because it sounds like it has both North and South in the name, but I guess I can't hold that against them. I will, but I probably can't. And that's a US company?
Norfolk Southern, yeah. Yeah, nice. Because that's kind of sound like the Great Western Railway or something like that, like it could be from here. So how has this fund performed? Honestly, its benchmark is the S&P 500, which, as we saw earlier, has returned 15.4% per year, on average, over the past five years when accounting for dividends. So can this fund rival it? I mean, that's a pretty high bar to try and cross.
Yeah, and the answer is… no. With a disappointing average annual return of 9.6% per year, which is comfortably behind the return of its benchmark, and the fund will charge you 0.64% per year for the pleasure.
Now, when I was looking at the fact sheet of the fund, it actually says that it kind of is gold, is that it targets a dividend yield above that of the S&P 500 over a market cycle. Basically, over 5 or so years, this fund says that it will aim to pay you a higher percentage of your investment in dividends than the S&P 500 would.
which, hey, it may well have done. But I don't really care because an S&P 500 index fund has outperformed it so substantially. But honestly, who cares if this fund can deliver a slightly higher dividend yield?
I'm certainly at the point where on my investment journey where I just want to grow my money as much as possible, I don't care if that's through dividends that I will reinvest or through the share prices of my investments going up. I don't really care if this fund can get a little bit more paid out to me in dividends as a percentage of my investment, if it's going to underperform its benchmark so substantially.
I guess the argument is that this fund will be more stable in tough times, but we haven't had many tough times in the stock market over the past five years. Only time will tell, but sadly, this episode is going out with more of a whimper than a bank. Thanks JP Morgan.
Now we hope this episode helps you to learn a few more about these funds. I think there's certainly some interesting ones that we found out about, especially in terms of the managed funds. But when it comes to investing, we know that there are probably still loads of questions you have and plenty of stuff that you might not feel 100% confident about, but there is something else we can do.
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We know you're busy and like and get in the way, which is why our course is on demand and you can go through it all in your own time. Signups are currently open for our latest intake, but only for a limited time and they will close on Sunday the 2nd of February. You can head to the description of this episode for a link to our website where you can find out everything the course entails and whether or not it would be right for you.
Alternatively, it's just www.stocksandsavings.com. We really hope you'll join over 1,500 students that have taken the next step on their investing journeys. So that wraps up our exploration of 10 popular funds and ETFs in the UK. I think if we had to pick some favourites from the ones that we mentioned today, I think it's obviously the Fuxio World Index Fund, even though we use the Invesco one, but yeah, it wasn't on the list. And then in terms of managed ones, probably the Jupiter India Fund, at least for me.
But remember, this episode is just a starting point to your own research. Before making any investment decisions, consider your own goals, how much risk you're comfortable with, and how long you plan to invest. As always, it would be amazing if you could give our podcast a 5 star rating on Spotify and Apple podcasts. Thanks again to our sponsor, Train212, and remember to check out the referral link in the description and get your free fractional share worth up to 100 pounds. Keep in mind that terms and conditions apply to the offer.
Also, just a reminder that signups are currently open for limited time to the stocks and savings investing course. I think they'll close about four or five days after this podcast comes out. So be sure to have a look at our website. You can find the link in the description or it's www.stoxinsavings.com and join over 1,500 investors that have already taken the next step on their investing journeys with us. We hope you enjoyed this episode and we can't wait for you to join us again next week. Until next time, bye-bye.