14, June, 2022, LONDON –

Despite two stellar years of growth, Tesla and Bitcoin have had a very turbulent 2022, leaving Gold as the current leader in Finder’s Investment Tracker. Even though it ranked 6th out of 7 in 2021, someone who invested £1,000* at the beginning of 2022, would currently be 13% up.

Every year, the personal finance comparison site follows the most popular types of investments from the previous year to see how they perform against each other. By investing* £1,000 in 7 different types of investments, the aim is to help understand the risk associated with different approaches, especially given the disruption to the markets caused by coronavirus and the cost of living crisis.

Riskier investments struggle

Bitcoin is the worst performing investment of 2022 so far, having declined 47%. If you had invested £1,000 into Bitcoin at the beginning of January, it would currently be worth £525. This is after two fantastic years of growth, where it returned 59% in 2021 and 292% in 2020.

Tesla was the most popular stock in the UK in 2021, with an initial £1,000 investment being worth £1,514 at the end of the year. However, anyone who bought shares in it at the beginning of this year will be disappointed, as they would currently be sitting on a 40% decline in value (£601).

This year’s 3rd worst performer is the UK’s most popular fund of 2021, Fundsmith Equity. It has dropped fairly consistently in 2022 and a £1,000 investment would currently be worth £826. This is a 17% decline since the beginning of the year. It is followed by a FTSE tracker, an Exchange-traded fund (ETF) that mirrors the FTSE 100’s performance, that is currently down on the original £1000 investment, returning £960.

The top performers of the year

With global markets faltering, Gold is currently the best investment in 2022’s tracker. Someone who invested £1,000 at the beginning of the year would be £128 up (£1,128), and it reached the highest amount of all investments (£1,131) on April 29th.

If you would have invested £1,000 into the Dollar at the beginning of January, it would currently be worth £1,114, despite a marginal fall throughout January and February (it’s lowest level was on the 19th January at £994.20) – it reached a year to date high of £1,103 in May. Compared to this stage in 2021, the dollar has seen a 13% positive swing in 2022.

Surprisingly, savings accounts are currently this year’s 3rd best performer with Ipswich Building Society’s 1.15% interest rate, providing stable growth for consumers – currently worth £1,005. It is worth remembering that, unlike the other investment options in the tracker, saving accounts are the only option that carry no risk of capital being lost

Commenting on the findings, Head of Research and Communications at the personal finance comparison site, finder.com, Matt Mckenna, said:

“Despite two years of fantastic growth for riskier assets like Bitcoin and Tesla, this year is a stark reminder of the warning that past performance is not an indicator of future results. Higher potential reward comes with higher potential risk and it is a real possibility that you could lose a lot, or all, of your money when you invest – more so if you go into particularly risky cryptocurrencies or ‘penny’ stocks.

“Make sure to thoroughly research any investment you want to make. Our recent white paper found that 7 in 10 (71%) investors who identify as beginners do very little to no research before making an investment, which is a truly worrying statistic. Make sure you’re not one of these people!

“While the returns from the savings account are not eye-catching compared to the other assets in the tracker this year, it is wise to have at least some of your cash somewhere where it is protected in case you need it for an emergency.”

To see the research in full visit: https://www.finder.com/uk/investment-tracker

Methodology:

The Tracker follows the price of: the FTSE, Bitcoin, Gold, the Dollar, Stock – Tesla, Fund – Fundsmith Equity, Savings account – Ipswich BS

For the individual company share and fund, we selected the most popular choices in 2021 according to Trading 212 and Interactive Investor. For the savings account, we picked the most competitive rate available on our site as of Jan 2022. All data is taken from the markets at the close of markets on a Friday. For this release, the prices were taken on Friday 13th June.

*The £1,000 hasn’t actually been saved or invested in these methods, it is just being used as a way to illustrate the performance of each method.