Domestic investors have fled the stock mar­ket at a record rate this year, miss­ing out on a storm­ing rally in which Lon­don has out­paced both US and European bourses.

UK investors have pulled about £26bn from Lon­don-lis­ted equit­ies in 2025, accord­ing to EPFR data, the highest level on record for a cal­en­dar year as meas­ured by out­flows from funds invest­ing in the coun­try.

Nev­er­the­less, the FTSE 100 is on course for its best year since its rebound from the global fin­an­cial crisis in 2009, driven in part by for­eign investors look­ing to diver­sify their expos­ure bey­ond the US and to rel­at­ively cheap valu­ations on the Lon­don mar­ket.

“The UK equity mar­ket is the unex­pec­ted win­ner of 2025 but UK investors don’t seem to care,” said Emmanuel Cau, head of European equit­ies strategy at Barclays.

UK investors pulled £3.4bn from Lon­don stocks via fund with­draw­als in Octo­ber alone, the biggest monthly out­flow of the year.

Ana­lysts attrib­uted the moves in part to next week’s Budget, which is likely to involve tax rises and has promp­ted investors to sell out of the mar­ket and boost their cash reserves.