For years, the received wisdom among Britain’s retail investors has been simple: if you want excitement, growth and glamour, look west. Silicon Valley dazzles; the FTSE plods. And yet 2025 has produced a small but intriguing rebellion against this orthodoxy.
On the IG investing and trading platform, British high street names, the sort you pass on a damp Saturday afternoon rather than read about in Wired, have staged an unlikely comeback.
IG’s analysis of customer data over the past 12 months shows that while technology stocks, particularly those linked to the latest quantum enthusiasms, continue to dominate the list of breakout shares, a clutch of thoroughly familiar UK retailers have muscled their way into prominence. Sainsbury’s, Greggs and WHSmith, hardly the Magnificent Three, have all recorded dramatic surges in the number of investors holding their shares.
Sainsbury’s leads the charge
The supermarket chain enjoyed a 156 per cent increase in the number of IG customers holding the stock in 2025, with those brave or bored enough to buy in April rewarded with handsome gains. This is not the stuff of meme-stock frenzy, but it is a reminder that dull businesses can still deliver agreeable returns, particularly when expectations are low and management competence is rediscovered.
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Greggs LON:GRG tells a slightly different story. The nation’s favourite purveyor of sausage rolls has struggled in share price terms this year, yet that did not deter retail investors. On the contrary, the number of IG users holding Greggs shares jumped 148 per cent. This looks very much like classic “buying the dip”: investors betting that Britain’s appetite for cheap carbohydrates will outlast a patch of disappointing performance.
WHSmith LON:SMWH, that curious hybrid of travel retailer and high street survivor, offers the most counterintuitive case of all. Despite its share price falling more than 40 per cent in 2025, the number of IG holders increased by 123 per cent. Marks & Spencer LON:MKS, enjoying something of a reputational revival in recent years, also saw a healthy 76 per cent increase in the number of customers holding the stock. If nothing else, it suggests that retail investors are willing to take a punt on battered British brands rather than endlessly chase US momentum trades.
The shift is not confined to the breakout list
Among the most widely held stocks on IG’s platform, Rolls-Royce LON:RR. has surged from ninth place to fourth, overtaking the likes of Microsoft, Apple and Alphabet. easyJet LON:EZJ has broken into the top ten after a 20 per cent increase in holders, while IAG LON:IAG, owner of British Airways, remains firmly entrenched. Four of the ten most commonly held stocks are now FTSE-listed, with Lloyds Banking Group LON:LLOY also making the cut.
Chris Beauchamp, IG’s chief market analyst, notes that while the Magnificent Seven have monopolised headlines on the back of AI fever, British stocks have quietly attracted solid interest. The numbers are awkward for those who assume the FTSE is permanently second-rate. Over the past year, the FTSE 100 has outperformed the S&P 500, returning 20.5 per cent versus 15.6 per cent, and barely 8.6 per cent for the US index when priced in sterling.
Is this a genuine turning point or merely a brief flirtation with domestic equities? Sceptics will point out that currency movements and energy stocks have flattered UK returns, and that this does not herald a sudden renaissance in British corporate dynamism. Quite so. But after years of neglect, even a modest rediscovery of Britain’s own companies feels noteworthy. Sometimes, the most radical act for an investor is simply to look down the high street rather than across the Atlantic.
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