Spurred by signs of a long-awaited British recovery, UK investors are starting to snap up UK-focused exchange traded funds (ETFs) as a low cost way to cash in on the good times ahead. Morningstar figures show they invested more than £92m of their savings into UK ETFs in October, and account for a large proportion of stockbrokers' total ETF sales. Barclays Stockbrokers says that around 60 per cent of the ETFs bought through its platform in October were UK-focused funds.
Non-UK funds enjoying a popular run include iShares S&P Small Cap 600 (ISP6) and iShares FTSE Mib (IMIB) which tracks the Italian market.
But are these popular funds really the cream of the crop when it comes to ETFs? Or are investors adopting a herd mentality and being dazzled by big funds and heavy inflows? We analyse six of the most popular UK-focused ETFs to see if investors could be getting a better deal elsewhere: