magazine archive
magazine archive
Russ Mould
Why gold and bonds are rallying
Thursday 29 Apr 2021Some regular readers may think it does not take much to puzzle this column at the best of times and there can be no denying that the big picture right now seems to be full of contradictory eddies and whirls which make it particularly difficult for investors to form a clear-cut view. For instance,...
Where are we in the market cycle?
Thursday 22 Apr 2021As regular readers will know, one of this column’s favourite market sayings comes from fund management legend Sir John Templeton, who once asserted that: ‘Bull markets are founded on pessimism, grow on scepticism, mature on optimism and die on euphoria.’ Applying this test can potentially help...
Why FTSE 100 is warming to economic upturn
Thursday 15 Apr 2021As the UK starts to emerge from its latest lockdown, the FTSE 100 already trades above the levels reached just before the pandemic first made its presence felt in China and Southern Europe in early 2020. There can be no finer example of how financial markets are forward-looking, discounting...
Lessons to learn from the Archegos drama
Thursday 01 Apr 2021An American former colleague from my investment banking days was always tickled when he quoted a sketch from the comedy show Saturday Night Live , where the punchline was: ‘And today on the New York Stock Exchange, no shares changed hands. Everyone finally has what they want.’ As a well as a smile...
Small caps can tell us a lot about the market mood
Thursday 25 Mar 2021Small cap stocks are perceived to be riskier than their large cap counterparts and with good reason. As such, they can be used to judge wider market risk appetite – if small caps are rolling higher, we are likely to be in a bull market. If they are falling, we could be shifting to a bear market. In...
Lessons one year on from the low
Thursday 18 Mar 2021It was Warren Buffett’s mentor, Benjamin Graham, who once wrote: ‘The intelligent investor is a realist who sells to optimists and buys from pessimists.’ Such plain-speaking, common sense has yet again proved its worth over the past 12 months to offer a timely lesson to us all. It is almost a year...
The questions facing UK gilts
Thursday 11 Mar 2021In some ways, markets had little to digest in the immediate wake of the Budget, as so much of the chancellor of the exchequer’s speech had made its way into the newspapers the previous weekend. Rishi Sunak did come up with a couple of surprises all the same, in the form of the superdeduction for...
Which chancellors of the exchequer have been best for the UK stock market?
Thursday 04 Mar 2021The Conservative Party’s Benjamin Disraeli, twice prime minister and thrice chancellor of the exchequer, once said of his bitterest political rival, who held each post on four occasions: ‘Well, if Mr Gladstone fell into the Thames that would be a misfortune; and if anybody pulled him out, that...
An emerging trend to note in bond markets
Thursday 25 Feb 2021Zambia, Venezuela, Tajikistan and Armenia do not make a habit of featuring in this column, not least as they are a bit off the beaten track, even for the most intrepid investor. But they catch the eye because each member of this quartet has seen an increase in interest rates this year, to take the...
Blame game won’t stop the next Gamestop
Thursday 18 Feb 2021Today’s (18 February) Congressional hearing in Washington into what happened with shares in Gamestop should make for fascinating listening. A host of luminaries – including Vlad Tenev from Robinhood, Ken Griffin from Citadel, Steve Huffmann from Reddit, high-profile retail trader Keith Gill (‘...