However, towards the middle of the year this shifted and among the top ten list actively managed funds outranked passives.
The shift reflects slowly increasing consumer confidence, according to Sara Wilson, head of platform proposition at Alliance Trust.
“Last year was a great year for passives, and this carried into 2014. But we’ve seen a change in the last few months on the fund side with what investors are starting to prefer now, including more active managers in their portfolios," she said.
Part of the reason for this shift is that active managers were pushing their funds. This was notable with Standard Life Investment’s promotion of its GARS fund and Woodford’s name making the rounds throughout the industry.
“Passive management incurs an overall lower cost, but now investors are more interested in what the fund can achieve and are happy to have an active manager lead the investment decisions,” Wilson noted.
Neil Woodford’s fund, which launched in June, rocketed into second place in terms of overall sales in the first half, as well as coming second in July sales on the Alliance Trust Savings platform.
This is not a surprise, according to Wilson, who points out how widely anticipated the fund launch was.
“The popularity of the fund has continued in July with the accumulation version of the fund ranked second and the income version ranked 5th,” she said.
Meanwhile, the HSBC FTSE All Share Index tracker crowned the table as top passive fund in the first six months of the year.
When it comes to popular equities, investors continued to prefer blue chip FTSE 100 companies. Interestingly, financial stocks remained a favourite.
“Investors are more savvy with financial services, and with media coverage of certain financials this creates a better awareness of the stocks among investors,” Wilson noted.
She also added that, in general, those changes within popular stock choices from month to month reflect those companies which have seen a lot of media coverage.
“Vodafone was a popular choice in July, due to its recent deal with Verizon. It’s been raised in people’s consciousness and they have a greater awareness of the stock.”
The figures for July would seem to illustrate that there has not been a significant change in buying behaviour compared to the first half of 2014 with FTSE 100 companies dominating, she added.
