10 hottest ISA shares, funds and trusts: week ended 19 April 2024

With the new tax year under way, we look at the investments ii customers have been buying within their ISAs during the previous week. The data includes only real-time trades, not regular investing instructions, and combines the use of both existing funds and new money.

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Top 10 shares in ISAs

It was all about finance and income at the top of the list of the 10 most-bought ISA stocks on the interactive investor platform last week, with three of the FTSE 100’s top six income stocks in the mix.

Legal & General Group (LSE:LGEN) reclaimed the top spot, knocking Lloyds Banking Group (LSE:LLOY) off its perch after just one week. The insurer is one of the most generous stocks around, currently yielding 8.7%.

Asset manager M&G Ordinary Shares (LSE:MNG) which yields 10% right now, climbed four places to number two. It’s consistently proved doubters wrong who for years have said the dividend wasn’t safe. It had also generated a handsome capital gain until dropping 15% from a near three-year high a month ago. 

In third, it’s another insurer, this time Phoenix Group Holdings (LSE:PHNX), whose current prospective dividend yield of 11.3% is second in the top 100 index only to Vodafone Group (LSE:VOD). The shares increased in popularity late March following annual results that included a commitment to dividend growth, and again when the share price fell sharply earlier this month.

GSK (LSE:GSK) is in the top 10 for the first time since the week ending 2 February. It yields a more modest 3.8% currently, but still made it into my portfolio of shares to give you a £10,000 annual income in 2024 as a diversifier. And I’m not the only one adding it to a portfolio. One City analyst recently rated GSK as one of the European stocks to rival America’s Magnificent Seven tech companies. Shareholders get a chance to vote on company business at GSK’s AGM in London in two weeks’ time.

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Popularity wasn’t just about income though. Two US growth stocks fought their way back into the top 10 last week.

Tesla Inc (NASDAQ:TSLA) made it to fourth place, having dropped out of the top 10 last week for first time since the end of February. Shares have been under pressure all year and closed Friday at $147, making it a 40% decline for 2024 so far and their lowest since January 2023.

Last Friday, the electric vehicle company’s boss Elon Musk announced price cuts in many major markets including the US, China and Germany. The news comes ahead of first-quarter results due to be published on Tuesday. Quarterly vehicle deliveries, announced at the start of April, missed Wall Street forecasts.

Bitcoin play MicroStrategy Inc Class A (NASDAQ:MSTR) also scraped into the top 10 after a two-week break. The shares, which slumped around 20% last week to $1,174, haven’t been this cheap since early March. They’re also down about 40% since peaking at just under $2,000 less than a month ago. However, for context, they’re still up 140% since early February when bitcoin was just $42,000 compared with a high of almost $74,000 mid-March.

Top 10 funds and trusts in ISAs

Two investment trusts broke into the top 10 most-bought funds and investment trusts lists last week: Alliance Trust Ord (LSE:ATST) (in at sixth) and City of London Ord (LSE:CTY) (in at ninth).  

Alliance Trust invests globally using a multi-manager approach, where it outsources stock picking to external managers. City of London invests predominantly in UK incomes shares to give investors a high and growing dividend income. It currently yields around 5%.

The most-bought collective again was another investment trust - Scottish Mortgage Ord (LSE:SMT) - which buys fast-growing public and private companies. JPMorgan Global Growth & Income Ord (LSE:JGGI) was the final trust on the list, in fourth place, up from eighth the week before last.   

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Aside from Fundsmith Equity, which fell three places to fifth, and Royal London Short Term Money Market, down three places to eighth, all other open-ended funds on the list were index funds. 

They were: Vanguard LifeStrategy 80% Equity (second place), L&G Global Technology Index (third place), Fidelity Index World (seventh place) and HSBC FTSE All-World Index (10th place). 

Dropping off the list last week were Jupiter India and Vanguard FTSE Global All Cap Index.  

Funds and trusts section written by ii’s deputy collectives editor Sam Benstead.