magazine archive
magazine archive
Russ Mould
Will China flourish in the Year of the Rat?
Thursday 23 Jan 2020The latest Chinese lunar year begins on 26 January as the Year of the Rat takes over from the Year of the Pig. In theory, China already has something to celebrate, in the form of the phase one trade deal signed with the US on 15 January. In return for Beijing agreeing to substantially increase...
The most and least popular stocks heading into 2020
Thursday 16 Jan 2020Although the UK’s stock market underperformed those of Eastern Europe, the US and Western Europe in 2019, in sterling, total-return terms, few investors are likely to sniff at a total return of 19.2% from the FTSE 350 index. The FTSE 250 outpaced the FTSE 100 with a total return of 28.9% against 17...
Five dangers to watch in 2020
Thursday 09 Jan 2020One of this column’s favourite aphorisms from master investor Warren Buffett (and there are admittedly quite a few of those) is: ‘speculation is most dangerous when it looks easiest’. The strong returns offered by most asset classes in 2019 could tempt some investors to think making money is easy...
Where next for the price of oil and its producers?
Thursday 19 Dec 2019OPEC is ending 2019 where it ended last year – on the back foot, trying to support the price of oil with production cuts pushed through in conjunction with Russia and other countries who are not members of the cartel. The extra reduction, which takes the total to 1.7m barrels of oil a day, is...
Don’t get caught out by investment bubbles
Thursday 12 Dec 2019One theory held by some market strategists is that a tidal wave of cheap cash, provided by central banks’ interest rate and quantitative easing policies, means we are witnessing ‘The Bubble of Everything’ as prices surge across a range of assets, ranging from equities to bonds to property to art,...
A five-point plan for emerging markets
Thursday 05 Dec 2019The definition of an emerging market has often (jokingly) been a market from which you cannot emerge fast enough when it all goes wrong. Argentina and Chile are 2019’s examples that seem to support this rule as the former lurched into its latest debt crisis and the latter into a fresh political one...
How to read the bond market
Thursday 28 Nov 2019For the umpteenth year in a row, bonds have confounded the bears in 2019. Once more, its exposure to the fixed-income asset class has proved its worth, for diversification purposes and for sold total returns. Yields may not be huge, far from it with the benchmark UK 10-year Gilt offering 0.71% and...