£5k left in Stocks and Dividends ISA? 2 top ETFs to consider buying in April
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Many investors will be scrambling to top up the remainder of their Stocks and Shares ISA allowance before 5 April. But sometimes the number of investment options available – more than 1,000 companies in London Stock Exchange alone – it can be a bit overwhelming.
This is where exchange traded funds (ETFs) can come in very handy. By having a basket of 50 or 100 stocks, an investor gets diversified exposure to a particular theme, sector, or area.
With this in mind, here are two ETF buying opportunities worth considering right now.
The AI evolution of the body
Let’s start with an ETF that provides deep exposure to perhaps one of the most powerful technology trends of this century. That’s it iShares Automation & Robotics UCITS ETF (LSE:RBTX).
The fund focuses on companies developing automation and robotics technology. This area is charging rapid advancements in AI, leading to that Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang recently called “ChatGPT time” of robots (physical AI).
The ETF has 134 stocks, which cover the entire ecosystem needed to make machines intelligent and autonomous. So that’s AI, which is the ‘brain’ behind automation, machine vision and sensor technology, semiconductor equipment, and traditional manufacturing robots.
Now, what I like here is that the ETF is very different from the top The Nasdaq-100 index. One Magnificent Seven stock is Nvidia, but the AI chip leader has a weight of 3.13%. This means that there is very little risk of Big Tech suffering.
| Top five catches (March 2026) | |
|---|---|
| Advantest | Semiconductor test equipment |
| Intel | Processors for PCs and servers |
| The KLA | Test systems for chip manufacturing |
| Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) | Designs CPUs and GPUs |
| Teradyne | Semiconductor testing equipment and industrial robots |
A key risk here would be a global economic downturn, which could lead to slow adoption of robotics technology. Inflation and supply chain issues are also challenges the industry is currently facing.
However, the one-time trajectory seems more certain. Nvidia’s CEO says that in the future every industrial company will be a robotics company, creating a multi-billion dollar global market.
This ETF gives long-term investors exposure to this growth without having to pick individual winners. The ongoing fee is 0.4%.
High quality green chips
The second bag is iShares Core EURO STOXX 50 UCITS ETF (LSE:EUE), which is made up of 50 major green chips from the eurozone.
Admittedly, Europe is not known for rapid growth. As the old (perhaps slightly inaccurate) saying goes, “the US invents, the EU controlsIndeed, between 2008 and 2023, EU GDP increased by 13.5% while US GDP increased by 87%, according to the World Bank.
The gap is likely to widen further as the US is a exporter of energy and AI technology while the EU relies on imports for both. Therefore, rising energy costs could hit European companies and consumers hard this year.
However there are truly world-class businesses across Europe, incl ASML, Banco Santander, LVMH (Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton), Hermes Internationaland a German software company SAP.
Bringing ASML closer, this is the only company in the world that makes EUV (extreme ultraviolet) lithography equipment. Without this, there would be no advanced semiconductors and the AI revolution.
Or take a plane maker Airbusanother top holding ETF. Its current order backlog is about 8,754 commercial aircraft (or about 10 years of operation).
In addition, European shares are cheap, and the ETF trades at just 17 times earnings while generating a dividend yield of 2.6%. The ongoing fee here is 0.1%.
