Most popular stocks of 2025 among AJ Bell DIY investors

Income, defence and AI were the dominant themes among the most popular stocks with AJ Bell DIY investors in 2025.

Hot investment themes act like a magnet to certain people as they become drawn to a topic everyone’s talking about; or where they can see a clear opportunity for a specific group of companies to enjoy strong earnings growth. AI and defence ticked those boxes, respectively.

It’s fair to say that 2025 will go down in history as a tip-top year for markets. Many of the most popular UK stocks with the public delivered much stronger returns than you might expect for a typical year, and gains were broad-based rather than concentrated on one industry.

AJ Bell customers showed a strong preference for UK shares, the opposite to many other investors given Investment Association figures show steady net outflows from UK equity funds during the year.

Based on £ net flows on AJ Bell’s DIY investor platform from 1 Jan 2025 to 2 Dec 2025

AI stocks

AI has continued to excite people, even though we’ve had bubble talk as the year draws to a close. The idea of technology making lives easier for consumers and businesses has gathered momentum, and AI has become part of every day.

When something as big as AI is splashed all over the news, discussed constantly in the workplace, and embedded into devices like phones and laptops, it’s no wonder that people think there is money to be made. Investors have shown keen interest in companies either supplying the tools or using it in their processes.

Nvidia has been many investors’ go-to AI name for several years, perhaps explaining why it features so highly on AJ Bell’s most popular stock list.

AI is also the prevalent theme when looking at the top 10 most popular US-listed shares with AJ Bell customers. Palantir, Meta, Alphabet, Advanced Micro Devices and Microsoft are all plugged into the AI world in one shape or another, and they’ve been a big hit with people looking for ISA or pension ideas.

Based on £ net flows on AJ Bell’s DIY investor platform from 1 Jan 2025 to 2 Dec 2025

Defence stocks

The defence sector enjoyed a tailwind in 2025 as more governments committed to spend more on military protection and cyber security.

Investors had plenty of choice for defence-related stocks, including BAE Systems and Rolls-Royce in the UK, and Palantir from the US-listed names.

Based on £ net flows on AJ Bell’s DIY investor platform from 1 Jan 2025 to 2 Dec 2025

Income stocks

Sectors come in and out of fashion, but income stocks tend to rank highly on investors’ shopping lists every single year. The UK stock market is a rich hunting ground for dividend payers and the FTSE 100 has a wealth of names paying much higher levels of income than cash in the bank.

Legal & General is the highest yielding stock in the FTSE 100 with an 8.7% prospective yield and is also the number one pick for AJ Bell DIY investors. Based on our analysis of net flows on the investment platform during 2025, Legal & General stood tall above all other stocks.

Income investors look for sustainability of dividends, and for the payout to rise each year. Life insurance might be a low growth sector, but the monthly premiums paid by customers means providers have a constant stream of cash flow to deploy in investments and to fund dividends to keep investors sweet.