European savers kept buying the world's stock markets through the worst week of the artificial intelligence sell-off. The Vanguard FTSE All-World UCITS ETF, the accumulating US dollar share class, drew an estimated net €2.7 billion in October, making it Europe's best-selling exchange-traded fund for the month, according to LSEG Lipper data reported by ad-hoc-news.

The inflows arrived in a bruising month for the fund itself. The accumulating share class closed on Friday at €164.80, up 0.6 percent on the day, but still down 2.3 percent over the week and 4.8 percent over the past 30 days. The fund tracks an index spread across thousands of companies worldwide, so its fortunes are tied closely to a handful of large US technology stocks, and those were the shares investors sold first when fears grew that Democratic control of Congress would bring tighter AI regulation and slower data-centre building.

The buying was not a one-week event. Trackinsight data put a single week's net inflows at €770 million in late October, and the fund gathered €641.8 million in the week of 19 to 23 October, the largest weekly haul of any European index fund, followed by a further €491.6 million in the week of 26 to 30 October. Year-to-date inflows stand at €23.38 billion. ETF Express, using the same Trackinsight data, independently recorded the fund as Europe's top exchange-traded product by inflows in the week of 12 to 16 October, with €535.2 million, and Vanguard as the top issuer that week with €2.20 billion.

Retail demand tells the same story. Broker Interactive Investor ranked the fund second among its ten most-bought index funds and ETFs in October, unchanged from September, a ranking based on the number of buy orders rather than money taken in. An evaluation by financial portal Boring Money pointed the same way: across several large UK brokers, including AJ Bell, Fidelity and Hargreaves Lansdown, the fund was among the most frequently purchased ETFs in October.

The backdrop was a sharp reversal in global markets. The Nasdaq fell 5.5 percent on Thursday, its worst day in 19 months, after Democrats won both chambers of Congress, and Asian markets followed with heavy falls on Friday. The FTSE 100 closed 1 percent lower in London on Friday, and the fund's own price fell with the rout before recovering some ground. Yet the MSCI All-World index had risen 1.38 percent as recently as 4 November, according to Reuters, a reminder of how quickly sentiment turned.

For holders, the fund's breadth is both its appeal and its exposure. It holds more than 3,800 positions, so a single company's results cannot sink it, but its market-capitalisation weighting means the largest technology names still drive much of its movement. Whether the regulatory worries around US AI policy fade or press technology stocks down again is the question likely to set the tone in the sessions ahead, and the October flows suggest many European savers are answering it by staying invested rather than selling. This article reports market data and is not financial advice.