Shares magazine
Magazine archive
Editor's View
It’s goodbye for now in our final weekly issue
Thursday 25 Sep 2025After well over 1,000 issues Shares time as a weekly publication is coming to an end. A new monthly version is in the works for customers of AJ Bell and, if that applies to you, remember to look out for that later this year. However, it is clearly a good time to take stock. Having worked for Shares...
Gold takes out inflation-adjusted high as central banks look set to keep buying
Thursday 18 Sep 2025It is almost always more instructive to consider inflation when looking at how the value of something has changed over time. As a fan of classic cinema it can be depressing to look at the highest grossing films of all time and see a list which includes just one film made before this millennium –...
How a jobs report broke the looking glass
Thursday 11 Sep 2025I’ve written before in these pages – particularly in the 2010s – about how financial markets seemed to exist in a looking glass world. Bad news gets taken as good news because it raises the prospect of an intervention by central banks or governments on rates or stimulus which might, in turn, act as...
What the latest twist in tariff turmoil means for markets
Thursday 04 Sep 2025The latest twist in the tariff saga is a conundrum for investors. Broadly speaking, anything which reduces barriers to global trade is likely a positive for markets. Therefore, a ruling by the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit that most tariffs issued by the current US administration are...
Will defensives make a comeback?
Thursday 28 Aug 2025I n recent weeks there have been some hints that defensive stocks might be coming back into fashion. One piece of evidence for this is the outperformance of the FTSE 100 relative to its European, US and Japanese counterparts since the middle of August. The composition of the UK’s flagship index is...
Can you afford to be lukewarm on US stocks?
Thursday 21 Aug 2025The curtain is about to come down on the US quarterly earnings season. As we wrote last week, for the most part companies have impressed – with the caveat that Nvidia (NVDA:NASDAQ) will provide a pretty big full stop on proceedings next week (you can read more on what to expect here). The beats we...
Meet the new UK market addition which is set to join the FTSE 100 soon
Thursday 14 Aug 2025Amid the understandable hand-wringing about the future of the UK market, the addition of a new company which could soon be joining the ranks of the FTSE 100 has rather slipped under the radar. Greek outfit Metlen Energy & Metals (MTLN) moved its primary listing from Athens to London at the...
Three big questions as the UK M&A boom continues
Thursday 07 Aug 2025The M&A boom in the UK market has shown no signs of abating as deals continue to progress. This raises three big questions: who is doing the buying, is the trend sustainable and what does it mean for investors? Right at the end of July, life insurer and retirement solutions provider Just Group...
Hubble bubble? Strategist warns S&P 500 has moved into ‘sell’ territory
Thursday 31 Jul 2025At the beginning of July, strategists at Bank of America, led by Michael Hartnett, suggested if the S&P 500 index traded above 6,300 points this month it would trigger a ‘sell signal’. Though he added the proviso that ‘overbought markets can stay overbought as greed is harder to conquer than...
Inflation is back – what does it mean for markets?
Thursday 24 Jul 2025Inflation has returned as a live topic for markets as consumer price indices creep up on both sides of the Atlantic. The June reading for UK inflation came in at 3.6% against the 3.4% penciled in, while the US number was 2.7% versus the 2.6% anticipated. The latter was only a smidge ahead of the...