magazine archive
magazine archive
Russ Mould
What the race to the White House means for investors
Thursday 27 Aug 2020Milwaukee, Wisconsin and Jacksonville, Florida are home to two of America’s National Football League’s 32 teams, the Green Bay Packers and the Jacksonville Jaguars. Owing to the pandemic, it is not clear at the moment whether gridiron fans will be allowed into their stadia at any stage this season...
Are commodities primed to shine again?
Thursday 20 Aug 2020Copper’s surge from its spring lows to a three-year high at around $6,500 a tonne is an eye-catching development and one that will quicken the pulse of those investors who are exposed to miners, cyclical stocks or even equities more generally. The metal is malleable, ductile and a terrific...
Infrastructure could offer welcome shelter
Thursday 13 Aug 2020Traditional portfolio asset allocation tends to start with equities and bonds, with a bit of a cash buffer thrown in, before thoughts move to areas that are designed to provide some diversification, in the theory (or hope) that their performance does not correlate with (or mirror) that of the other...
The silver price is cheap relative to gold
Thursday 30 Jul 2020The Silver Surfer was the creation of Marvel Comics legend Jack Kirby and the character acted as the herald of Galactus, the devourer of planets. This intergalactic super-being was usually fended off by the Fantastic Four or The Avengers. From the point of view of investors, inflation devours...
The 20 names which hold the key to UK dividends
Thursday 23 Jul 2020An aggregation of analysts’ forecast for all of the FTSE 100’s members suggests that the index offers a dividend yield of 3.6% for 2020 and 4.4% for 2021. Those figures may look alluring to income-hunters, especially as the Bank of England base rate looks firmly anchored at 0.1%, and the next move...
Earnings forecasts flag FTSE 100’s mixed profit pedigree
Thursday 09 Jul 2020The Financial Conduct Authority’s decision to give companies additional time to prepare their financial statements may elongate the process but the imminent reporting season for UK plc could go a long way to shaping how the headline FTSE indices perform for the rest of this year and beyond. The...
Good portfolio planning matters more than good luck
Thursday 02 Jul 2020The twentieth-century American journalist Edward R. Murrow may be best known for his ground-breaking reports from Buchenwald in 1945 and the manner in which he signed off each of his broadcasts by saying ‘Good night and good luck’. That phrase was ultimately used in 2005 as the title of a film that...
US equities may need to prove their independence from the Fed
Thursday 25 Jun 2020America’s S&P 500 stock market index is down just 5% so far in 2020 and it is up 5% compared to its level of a year ago. Given everything that the world continues to throw at it – COVID-19, a deep economic downturn, social unrest, ongoing trade tensions with China and apparent chaos in the...
EU gears up for its next challenge
Thursday 18 Jun 2020This week’s online meeting of the European Union’s members to debate the proposed €750bn Covid-19 recovery plan is vitally important economically and politically. For progress to be achieved and help offered to those who need it, amid predictions that EU GDP will drop by 8% to 12% in 2020, all 27...
Why the UK market has lagged behind
Thursday 11 Jun 2020At the time of writing, the FTSE All-Share stands 32% above its March lows, which sounds pretty good, even reassuring, on the face of it. However, that rebound means that the All-Share has still lagged the FTSE All-World over the same period. It also means that the UK has underperformed most major...